Is COVID a Cataclysm? Or a Catalyst? I’m Going With the Latter

 

 

How’s your whiplash going? Mine sucks!!

I’m coming off a bad week. Actually, two weeks of funk.

Last week was the first time in over two years that I missed a Monday 5 p.m. blog post.

Couldn’t do it. The draft that I ran by my first-level “copyeditor” (my roommate of 49 1/2 years) got me a diplomatic groin kick.

As in: “Are you serious?”  “Who are you trying to be?” “Reel it in, Bucko!” “I don’t know you!”

Seems the article was a tad political and wholly judgmental – from an old dude who is in no position to be judging anybody on anything.

It had to be the whiplash.

I’m blaming COVID whiplash for resurrecting my arrogance, thinking my poison pen would move the societal needle. Never has, never will. Always backfires.

Which WHO/CDC directive do I believe or follow this week?

One rogue cop = elimination of police departments.  Whaaa?

A death in Minneapolis = free big-screen TVs at Walmart in California.

Stock market or wet market?

Hannity or Maddow? (Both are nuts!)

Open, don’t open.

Return to work, don’t return to work.

Retire, don’t retire.

All but the last two will fade away from our immediate consciousness. I’m guessing the last two represent a couple of the most pressing and lingering questions facing us going forward, especially in the 50-55+ demographic I enjoy working with as a life transition coach.

Emergence from adolescence?

Some have suggested that COVID may be a catalyst, perhaps the last vestiges and the most painful growing pains of us growing out of “adolescence” and maturing into “adulthood” as a society.

Surely, you’d think over two-and-a-half centuries would be long enough to mature into adulthood.

But then, maybe we need a few more adolescent tantrums to get there, to fully expose how we’ve lost our way culturally.

As much as anything our uncertainty reminds us that we have less control over life than we think we do, especially as we navigate through pervasive risk which may be the new normal as we get more globally interdependent, get sicker environmentally, and less healthy as individuals.

We’ve been swimming naked.

Warren Buffet famously said:

“It’s only when the tide goes out that you discover who’s been swimming naked.”

I know – he was talking about the scamming that goes on in the financial services industry. But, something in my gut tells me COVID is a receding tide and much of what we’ve become culturally is standing naked.

As in, what work has become for many.

As in our pre-occupation with retirement.

Are we finally beginning to drive a stake through the heart of meaningless employment and traditional retirement?

Let me extract some stats from this Forbes article that would say maybe we have at least bought the stake and the hammer when it comes to employment:

  • A recent study by CareerBuilder.com shows that a whopping 58 percent of managers said they didn’t receive any management training.
  • Fifty-eight percent of people say they trust strangers more than their own boss.
  • Seventy-nine percent of people who quit their jobs cite ‘lack of appreciation’ as their reason for leaving.
  • American workers forfeited nearly 50 percent of their paid vacation in 2017. The fear of falling behind is the number one reason people aren’t using their vacation time.
  • The Conference Board reports that 53 percent of Americans are currently unhappy at work.

Do we really want to continue to mix the above with one-hour commutes, drab-towers of cubicles, stupidly-high parking fees to pay for ecologically destructive lots, bad fast food at our desks, stress?

Better questions = better lives.

It’s a good time to remember that the quality of our lives is determined by the quality of the questions we ask of ourselves.

I was reminded of that this week trudging through a re-read of “Zen and the Art of Making a Living” in which author Laurence C. Boldt states:

“All imaginative journeys are prompted by questions. The mind runs on questions. Questions form a kind of skeletal structure upon which your life is built. New questions, deeply asked, will shape a new life.”

If nothing else, COVID is at least shaking trees and raising quality, transformational questions at a time when the quality of our health, relationships, and ecology are declining.  The quality of the questions starts getting really good and deep at mid-life and beyond for many.

I’m confident that COVID and the cousins that follow will move us down a path of more wholesome, purposeful, less-materialistic, planet-replenishing ways of life. We’re finding out quickly how we can do without what we thought we couldn’t do without that we busted our humps to avoid being without.

Aren’t we getting a big gulp of the shallowness of accumulation? Are we realizing that all this “getting” has an endpoint that we are approaching rapidly?  What if, instead of a $75,000 Beemer, I bought a $35,000 Honda Accord and two used Hondas for two families in need?

Are we finally going to acknowledge that retirement and the fast-track, at age 62, to a 1,000 unit high-rise retirement community – advertised as “cruises without the motion” but in actuality, cleverly-disguised virus petri-dishes  – might not be the wisest decision?

What is the story of your life?  Is there a “Quest?”

Your life – my life – is a story. And they are changing, this time in pretty big chunks.

Chances are if you are at or beyond midlife, you are asking these types of questions (Sourced from “Zen and the Art of Making a Living”)

  • Is there a story to my life?
  • What am I doing here?
  • Do I have a basic philosophy of life that is my own?
  • What is my part in this grand play of life?
  • How can I make a difference?
  • What do I want to do?  What must I do?
  • What can I realistically achieve in the span of my life?

Big, important questions, all accelerated by something we can’t even see.

Let me wrap with more from Laurence C. Boldt as he writes about crafting the story of your life:

“If I could look at it objectively, would I want to read the story of my life? Does it grab and hold my attention? Does it have the elements of a good story: challenges to overcome, growth, direction, confidence, a larger-than-self purpose? If the answer is no, then perhaps the main character needs development; the plot needs to be clarified, expanded, sharpened: or excitement needs to get generated by increasing the tension between what could be and what is. If you can honestly answer yes, then – where is your next chapter going?”

Be safe. Stay with the “guidance” despite the whiplash,

Crank up the intensity of the questions!

I, for one, have determined the main character in my story needs serious development. That’s why I write. You, as a reader, are a player in that development. I appreciate you and thank you for joining the list. And especially for your comments.  If this resonates – or not – let me know what you think with a comment below.

If you are not on the list, scoot over to www.makeagingwork.com and hop on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your Bucket List Just Got Blown Up – Now What?

 

2020 COVID-19 bucket-list revision:

Daughter’s country club wedding

  • Backyard, limit to 20 guests, buy masks, cancel caterer, saved $45K.

Bahama/Mediterranean cruise

  • Vision of floating petri-dish won’t go away – cancel, try to recover deposit.

Early retirement

  • Hmmm – maybe these non- or semi-retirement heretics are on to something. Buy some books. Find therapist to help with the adjustment.

Upscale condo at upscale retirement community

  • Get off the waiting list, kiss off the deposit. Sounds very much like cruise petri-dish but without the motion.

Trips to Machu Picchu and Buddhist ruins, Sri Lanka

  • Masks in that heat – yuck! Neighbor’s 2-hour presentation of pictures of same – incredibly boring!! Replace with discovering our own state, driving.

BMW X-7

  • Timing belt and new tires for 2016 MDX wins this one.

Use current bucket list to start charcoal grill

  • Start over – refocus on what’s important.
  • Don’t expect a return to “normal” – what is normal anyway?

I’m not much of a bucket-list guy. It goes with my stoic personality and increasingly hermit-like and insufferable nature. Get me my $5,000 Martin acoustic guitar and I’m pretty well complete. Oh, and a set of custom-fitted Taylormades/Pings/Callaways while you’re filling the bucket. I won’t bother you again after that.

I get a strange satisfaction nudging my decades-old Ford Exploder (that’s not a typo because it could, any moment) past 180,000 miles.

I’ve never understood buying one vehicle for what you could buy three Honda Accords.

So, I’m not having to adjust much but I know most are – and I’m sympathetic. Bucket lists have a goal-setting tone to them, positive visualization, hope and encouragement.

Until they don’t. And I suspect they are now just the opposite. And in need of the revisit.

I suggest it’s time for the revisit and a capitulation to the fact that this “new normal”, whatever it ends up being, is not going to support heavy consumerist bucket lists. Something’s gotta give. Something’s gonna change.

An outside perspective

I’m lateraling the ball this week to one of my favorite bloggers, Susan Williams at Boomingencore.com. Her latest post (see it here) was full of gems, including a 12-minute podcast interview with Dr. Sean Hayes, a clinical psychologist who shares some important perspectives on where we are, including dealing with bucket lists.

Here’s a link to the entire interview. I think you’ll find it enlightening and helpful.

Do you have a bucket list? If so, are you revisiting it? How has your perspective changed regarding a bucket list? Tell us where you are – we’d love to get your feedback.

OK, you’re over 60 – what do you know now that you’d like to tell your 40-year-old self?

Recently, a questioner on Quora.com asked me to answer this question:

“For people 55 and older, what would you tell your 40-year-old self? What do you wish you knew then that you know now.”

I’m deep into the demographic so I took a shot at it. I found it hard to keep it short.

So, if you know a 40-year-old that is patient enough to listen to an insufferable septuagenarian, here’s what they would hear from me:

1. Get healthcare literate and take control of your health.

Since you are living in the U.S., there is a good chance that your lifestyle has already done some damage to your long-term health. That is unless you are one of the few outliers that have lived a disciplined life of good diet, exercise, low/no stress, and have chosen to understand how your biology works and how best to treat it.

I grew up in an era in the 50s and 60s where our health habits were marginal at best. We lacked the knowledge, awareness, and access to the healthy living information that we have today. I smoked for 18 years until age 37. In the 1950′s, smoking was considered healthy and promoted by doctors, dentists, and movie stars. Diet was built around meat and potatoes. We knew little and lived accordingly.

Although I’ve been a gym rat for 40+ years since then, I didn’t pay attention to my diet and continued on the S-A-D (Standard American Diet) until into my late 50s.

At age 73, a routine heart scan revealed I was in the high-risk category for cardiovascular disease with significant artery calcification. But, I’m lucky. Mine appears to be distributed because subsequent echo and nuclear stress tests showed normal blood flow (my left ventricular artery – the widow maker – is clear).

My six-day-a-week exercise program continues and I have radically reduced my intake of meat, dairy, and C-R-A-P (calorie-rich-and-processed), the major components of our S-A-D still today.

My point is that if you choose to live a normal American lifestyle, you likely:

  1. Are too sedentary.
  2. Are eating badly.
  3. Are stressed out.
  4. Have a 65% chance of being overweight, 25% of being obese.
  5. May be one of the 50% of our American population that is pre-diabetic and one of the 70% that don’t know it.

We know all we need to know to take full advantage of our birthright of good health. But, as a society, we choose to continue to remain naive about how our bodies and minds work and choose to abuse our immune system with poor health habits, failing to appreciate the slow, insidious damage that is being done until, often, it is too late to stop or reverse.

Consider a few important facts:

  1. We have a food industry that doesn’t give a rip about our health and a healthcare industry that doesn’t care what we eat.
  2. Our antiquated healthcare system does not spawn practitioners that know or care about nutrition. They are trained in “cure” (as in drug it or cut it out) and not “prevention.” That’s on us.
  3. It’s also important to understand that the bio-pharmaceutical world is not built with your good health in mind, although they would lead you to believe it. They come forward with few solutions or drugs for “preventative health.” The pharmaceutical industry would collapse if everybody took care of themselves. It’s built on the cure concept, in alignment with the similarly trained physician community.

Once I understood how my biology worked at the cellular level, I began to change up many things in my life: increased my exercise, changed my diet, and radically reduced stress in my life. I recommend you read the source that kickstarted my increased awareness and motivation:  the best-selling, transformational book “Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy – Until You’re 80 and Beyond.”

The authors convinced me that I inherited a magnificent immune system of some 35 trillion cells that works 24×7 to keep me healthy. It doesn’t ask for much to do its job and will reward me if I follow the simple guidelines of what it needs i.e. good glucose, oxygen, fewer harmful stress hormones in my bloodstream, and rest.

Knowledge is power, especially in protecting your health. Take charge on your own, be distrustful of a profit-driven medical, pharmaceutical, and food industry to be doing what is right for your optimal health. Believe me, they are not.

2. Discover/rediscover your strengths and talents.

Most of us “olders” are a product of the 20th-century linear-life model that looks like this:

We were squeezed into a learn-earn-retire model built on conformity and heavy cultural expectations: getta degree; getta job; getta wife, house, kids, two cars and a golden retriever; getta title; getta 401K; getta gold watch.

Here’s where that has ended up happening for many of us from that era:

I’ll confess to having drunk this 20–40–20 Koolaid, spending 35 years operating outside my essence and my deepest talents and strengths in the corporate world building someone else’s dream and doing the “normal” accumulation and conformity thing. While I did OK, it took separation from that and a venture into my own business to slowly begin to reveal that I was wired for something different.

I ignored several personal/psychological assessments and personal experiences that were telling me that my core strengths were in learning, writing, teaching, speaking, coaching.

I’ve arrived where I need to be, but late in my life. So my suggestion to you at 40 is to start, or restart, thinking about what you are really, really good at, what you really, really enjoy doing, and what the world needs and ask yourself if that fits what you are doing now. If not, it’s a good time to start thinking of where you can best use your talents, skills, and experience and fill that hole that I’ll call “lack of purpose.”

3. Plan for a “third-age” with a sense of purpose.

The level of disengaged employees in the workplace is at an all-time high. I was there for years in the corporate world. Few people enter their careers with a solid grasp of what their deepest core talents, strengths, and desires are. Or if they had a sense of what those were, they entered the system that our culture expects of them where those innate inner drivers get shuttled to the background in favor of accumulation and conformity, meeting cultural expectations.

For many, these drivers never resurface. And they plod on through an unexciting, unmotivating career with the expectation of reaching that nirvana stage called “retirement” mostly unaware of the downsides of that decision.

This sense of “lack of purpose or meaning” tends to surface at mid-life, usually in the 40s and 50s when one faces the reality of more days behind than ahead and struggles with questions like “Why am I here?”; “What will be my legacy, what footprint will I leave?”

Here the one that really hit me hard: “Is it really true that the number of people that will attend my funeral will largely be determined by the weather?”

At 40, I suggest it’s a time for serious reflection on where you are, how that aligns with your deepest desires and talents and begin to think in terms of a “third age” and what you want it to look like. And 40 certainly isn’t too early to start. That “third age” is the period between end-of-career and/or end-of-parenting and true old age where we come full circle back to full dependency. You’re “third age” isn’t that far off.

That life-stage today is extending, for many, to as much as 30–40 years. That’s a long time to function without purpose which is where many in the self-indulgent retirement model find themselves discovering that 30 years bingo, bridge, and boche ball isn’t healthy or fulfilling.

Fortunately, we are seeing a rising tide of mid-lifers beginning to grasp the importance of a plan for the third-age that involves continued work, contribution, and sense of purpose as opposed to the traditional narcissistic, self-indulgent, consumer-only concept of retirement.

4. Get rid of the mental junk. Never stop learning.

By 40, you’ve been exposed to – perhaps succumbed to – many harmful, life-inhibiting myths and messages. Such as:

  1. I will automatically lose cognitive ability as I age.
  2. Or, my DNA is my destiny.
  3. Or traditional, leisure-based retirement is good for my health.
  4. Or work in older age is harmful.
  5. Or my creativity declines as I age.
  6. Or my physical decline is automatic and irreversible.

It’s a long list of disproved messages that we allow to entrench in our minds, much of it junk that holds us back. Ignore them – go the other direction.

We’re learning that our creative powers don’t diminish as we age unless we allow it. They may slow, but we can build brain power and create as well as when we were younger. So, don’t buy the line that says senescence is automatic. It isn’t.

We start dying slowly when we allow our dreams and desires to fade in the face of the myths about aging.

Henry Ford had it right:

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning today is young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. “

5. Get strong, stay strong.

Aerobic exercise should be keystone in your lifestyle. Optimally, from age 40 forward, your week should include six-days-a-week of aerobic exercise of 30 minutes or more with your heart rate in an aerobic zone of 220 minus your age x .65 and .85.

But it shouldn’t stop there. It’s vital to have a strength training component along with your aerobic exercise – at least two days a week.

Here’s why. Beginning in our mid-30s, our bodies begin to lose muscle mass at a gradually accelerating pace. The clinical name for the condition is sarcopenia and it really accelerates when we reach our 50s and ends up becoming one of the major causes of early frailty and premature death in our culture unless compensated for. The only antidote is strength-training – there are no drugs to effectively treat sarcopenia/loss of muscle mass.

Failure to compensate for loss of muscle mass is a major contributor to the “live short and die long” referenced above. Falls and broken hips, which are major contributors to early frailty and premature deaths, are a consequence of lost muscle mass.

Get a gym membership (if they are able to come back after COVID) or build an at-home gym (here’s a photo of my current in-home set up – treadmill, upright bike, Bowflex, weight-bench and assorted free-weights). Boring but effective.

Get with a trainer to get started properly and to avoid early injury that may discourage you from staying with the program. Put heavy emphasis on your core, quads, and ankles – keys to avoiding falls later on and for avoiding back problems as you age.

6. Rethink retirement.

You may have bought into the Euro-American concept of leisure-based retirement and perhaps are convinced that retirement is an entitlement and a nirvanic end-goal filled with exotic travel, golden sunsets, and total freedom. And it can be all that but at the risk of experiencing some of the subtle, hidden downsides of a self-indulgent, leisure-based retirement.

There is an encouraging, but slow, shift taking place in our awareness of the downsides of the traditional, off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure retirement model that we have cherished for decades and is so effectively marketed by the financial services industry.

Part of it is because we know so much more about what comprises good health and the growing awareness that our biology offers us only two choices, regardless of age: growth or decay. There are many aspects of the traditional retirement model that violate this biological principle and can accelerate our physical and mental decline.

Historically, there has been a tendency for retirees to become more sedentary and move less. Satisfying the dream of spending less time in the kitchen promotes a lifestyle of eating out more where food content is less healthy – 30–40% higher calorie content and generally heavy in sugar, salt, fat.

Netflix, voice-activated remotes, and the Laz-y-boy become increasingly tempting.

Continued learning diminishes.

Social isolation is a major concern post-retirement and is said to be equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

The new trend for this “third age” is away from self-indulgent, leisure-based retirement and more toward continuing to stay engaged with work of some sort, be it volunteer, part-time, full-time, or by starting a new business. The largest number of new businesses over the last decade or so have been started by folks over 50.

In my coaching practice with folks over 50, I encourage them to consider their third age as a time to strive toward achieving a balanced lifestyle of labor, leisure, and learning.

I believe it is a healthier formula and can lead to “living longer and dying shorter” versus our current predominant “live short, die long” model.

7. Connect and commit.

A recent random survey by Cigna revealed that nearly half of those surveyed “sometimes or always feel alone” and that 40% “feel their relationships are not meaningful and that they feel isolated.”

These are alarming numbers because of the health and mental health risk associated with social isolation and loneliness. AARP recently revealed that the health risk of prolonged isolation is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

There is substantial evidence that social isolation and loneliness increases the risk of early death. Social isolation is a threat as many retirees exit from the work environment and lose the major part of their social life. They often find themselves without much of a social network outside of that environment.

We are wired to connect, to be in community.

Let me wrap by quoting Chris Crowley, co-author of the aforementioned book “Younger Next Year.” As a successful attorney, he offers up the following which I feel is golden advice for a 40-something that is considering “what’s next.”

“It was nuts to immerse myself so completely in my old professional life before retirement. In particular, it was foolish not to have other hobbies, communities and commitment – things I care about and people who care about me- when my work life ended. If you’re going to do well in this country, you have to make a massive commitment to your job. No question about it. But don’t make your job your only commitment, because it will go away. You need to get a life that will last a lifetime. It makes sense to start on that project as early as you can. Today would be good.”

Your comments are important. They help us stay on track.  Scroll down and let us know your thoughts about this.

If you haven’t joined our growing list of readers, you can do so at www.makeagingwork.com.  Sign up for my weekly blog there and receive my free e-book “Achieve Your Full-life Potential:  Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

Three things a person should avoid once they are past 70 years old. P.S. I’m on the list

I’m being a bit lazy this week.

Actually, that’s not true. I just seem to hit a wall on coming up with something that I felt you fine folks would pay even a hint of attention to.

So, I’m cheating and republishing a post that I put out on Quora.com a few weeks ago.  It has become my 3rd most popular post and 10% of the 1,300,000 views my Quora posts have garnered since I started posting daily in December 2019.

It’s a response to the question: “What three things should a person avoid once they are past 70 years old?

At 78 (this month), I guess I can bring a little credibility.

From my experience, here are three things to avoid:

1.Most other 70-year olds. That sounds cruel – and it may blow a big hole in my circle of friends, many of whom are 70+ and who I do love and cherish. I suspect I may have some explaining and repair work to do. But here’s my rationale.

Many, if not most, 70-year-olds are innocently in the “decay mode”, attitudinally and biologically, with resignation to the myths of automatic senescence and accelerating physical decline. Dinner conversations rarely progress beyond the latest knee replacement or shoulder surgery, concerns about memory lapses, or a friend with this or that malady.

I’ve started calling them “organ recitals.”

“Getting old isn’t for sissies” and “aging is a bitch” are common cliches.

Rarely does the conversation swing to how to continue to honor one’s birthright of good health and counter the accelerating decline with good practices that should have been a part of life all along. There is little appreciation for “it’s never too late to start, but always too early to quit.”

As an outspoken advocate for living to 100 or beyond (I’ve set my target at 112 1/2), I’ve learned not to bring it up at gatherings of my 70-something friends as I’ve endured enough derision to know not to put my hand on that hot stove again. The repulsion is deep and wide.

Famed motivational speaker, Jim Rohn said: “You rise to the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Selfishly, as time squeezes in, I ask myself how can I grow through this relationship and is this person open to considering that life doesn’t need to be one of accelerating decline.

I love hanging with a kick-ass 70-year old who is relaunching and not landing. But there’s a lot of chaff and not a lot of that type of wheat in our demographic.

Edith Wharton once said:

“In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy, sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.”

Maybe it’s just my circle, but I don’t find many that peer into elderhood with excitement or have that “unafraid of change, insatiable curiosity, big thinking” attitude. I’m more inclined to find it existing in the youngers and suggest that, as 70-year olds, we are better served by increasing our efforts to hang with the generations behind us with two thoughts in mind: (1) to grow and learn from their creativity and energy and (2) to help guide them with our acquired wisdom and experience.

If you would like a big dose of the logic behind this and the results of this type of effort, check out Chip Conley and his book “Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder.”

2.The retirement trap. OK, here again, I’m trespassing and entering sacred ground. But the evidence is there to support this heretic suggestion. The traditional leisure-based, “vocation to vacation” retirement that has been pounded into our heads for 5–6 decades is a Trojan-horse that has lead several generations into a lifestyle counter to our biological nature and to a pattern of “living short and dying long” in the western cultures where it exists.

Retirement doesn’t exist in nature nor did it exist anywhere on the planet 150 years ago. It’s a Euro-American concept that doesn’t exist in many countries, some of which can claim the longest-living citizens.

It is a concept constructed for political purposes and has no relevance to today’s world.

Retirement puts us on a path to accelerated biological decline because it implies “winding down” is preferable to staying in the growth mode.  We are given only two choices with our bodies and brains – grow or decay. Retirement, which is derived from the French verb “retirer” which means retreat or go backward, can put us on the decay path – and does for most.

What are the fruits of traditional, leisure-based retirement? Here a few that we see that are not-life enhancing:

  • Increased isolation – a major killer
  • Sedentary living – despite best intentions, most retirees fail to maintain adequate exercise to sustain good health.
  • Self-indulgence – we are wired to serve. Retirement says you’ve paid that price and earned the right to be a self-indulgent consumer and to abandon being a selfless producer.
  • Removal of work from the lifestyle. Work is a key factor in longevity – retirement takes us in the other direction.

Fortunately, we are waking up to the fallacy and irrelevance of traditional retirement as we find ourselves in the unfamiliar territory of having a 20–40-year longevity bonus. Unretirement and semi-retirement now represent a rapidly developing trend.

3. Drifting. Because, as boomers and pre-boomers, we’ve been indoctrinated to covet the leap from labor to leisure, most of us move into that “third age” space between end-of-career and true-old age without a roadmap or plan for what that now-extended period is going to look like. We are now in new territory with 20–40 more years with limited precedents to guide us.

The result, for many, is entering an extended period of life in a drift, feeling their way through at the expense of the reservoir of energy and drive that exists in the early stages of this phase.

For example, we know that 2 of 3 retirements commence with no semblance of a non-financial plan that addresses the mental, physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual sides of life in this new territory.

Retirement can be like an iceberg, drifting and with little of the realities of retired life on the surface. It can become a purposeless, drifting, unfocused time of life that can put us on the path to accelerated deterioration.

Dan Sullivan, renowned business and entrepreneur coach and founder of Strategic Coach, says:

People die early for three reasons:

  • No money
  • No friends
  • No purpose.

A successful, healthy third-age requires a plan, a sense of purpose, a direction. Without it, we waste the talents, skills, experience, and energy that still reside in us as 70-year olds.

That’s close to being criminal.

Thanks for indulging my lack of momentum this week. These COVID-19 walls are closing in it seems. Hope you all are being safe. Let me know your thoughts about this week’s diatribe with a comment below or an email to gary@makeagingwork.com.

If you haven’t joined our growing list of readers, you can do so at www.makeagingwork.com.  Sign up for my weekly blog there and receive my free e-book “Achieve Your Full-life Potential:  Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

Don’t Let Yourself Become a Senior Citizen. There’s a Better Alternative.

There’s been a rush of questions on Quora.com lately about when someone becomes a “senior citizen.”
Is it when you are 60? 70? 80? 90?
I don’t like the moniker.  Or most monikers tagged to those of us beyond mid-life.  So I fired off an answer to one of the posted questions and decided I’d share it with you.
Here was the question:

Is a senior citizen in their 60s or 70s, and at what point is one considered elderly?

My answer (augmented from the original Quora post):

It’s in the eye of the beholder.

I find “senior citizen” to be outdated, pejorative, ageist, and unnecessary.

I’m 78 (this month) and refuse to put myself in that category. This is not a denial that I am not older than most or that I’m not getting older. I just don’t need another moniker to remind me and to plunk me into a category that has a negative tone to it.

Culturally, we have this need to categorize people by age. It’s a by-product of the creativity of the American Psychology Association and corporate marketers.

For instance, until 1904, we had two age categories – adult and child. Then, in 1904, G. Stanley Hall, President of the APA, invented the term “adolescent.”

Since then, we’ve grown to seven categories: newborn, infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adult, middle age, and old age

Each one is a lucrative market for psychologists and clever corporate marketers.

It’s not surprising that we really don’t know what name to use for folks in that now-extended period between middle age and old age.  We’ve never been here before with 20-40 years ahead of us, most of it in good health. Senior citizen probably made sense when you were automatically there at 65 in the eyes of the government, financial industry, the general public and were facing just a few years before checking out.

It doesn’t fit anymore. And I, and many in my demographic slot, take umbrage with the term.

So, if you don’t mind, I’ll step over the “senior citizen” moniker and just consider myself a fully-functioning septuagenarian with more gas in my tank than I had when I was wandering in the haze of corporate life at age 50.

I don’t much like hanging with those who consider themselves “senior citizens” since conversations tend to become “organ recitals” about the latest surgery, colonoscopy, memory lapse, knee/hip/shoulder replacement, back pain or about someone they know who just went through all of the above.

I love engaging other “kick-ass” sexagenarians/septuagenarians/octogenarians who refuse to participate in the ageism that terms like “senior citizen” represent.

“Kick-ass defined”

How do you know if you are “kick-ass”? You are:

  1. An iconoclast, a revolutionary, a rebel – outspoken against ageist stereotypes, attitudes, and comments; against old, bad ideas, myths, and messages about aging (e.g. traditional retirement, automatic and unchangeable senescence, youth centricity); against conventional wisdom about most things; an “outlier” in several dimensions.
  2. High energy –  driven with a late-life sense of purpose.
  3. The CEO of your health – in control of your body and mind through acquired knowledge of your biology and practicing self-efficacy through sensible, healthful lifestyle habits.
  4. Curious – always learning, exploring, in a constant growth mode.
  5. Creative – demonstrating that creativity doesn’t deteriorate with age.
  6. Selfless producer and not a self-indulgent consumer – giving back, paying forward, lighting a path for those behind by sharing skills, experiences, talents.
  7. Necessary – to someone, all the time.

Equally important, I like to engage “youngers” be they millennials or GenXers because I have so much I can learn from them. And there’s a chance it will help break down the stereotypes they have about older people, a stereotype we have created ourselves by looking and acting like senior citizens or, worst case, geezers.

“Modern Elder” is the right replacement for “senior citizen.”

I like where Chip Conley, successful 50-something entrepreneur and author of a book entitled “Wisdom at Work: The Making of the Modern Elder” has gone with this. He’s coined the term “Modern Elder.”

Conley states that Modern Elders exhibit wisdom in the following ways:

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

I think I’ve got most of these in me to bring out, polish up and do something meaningful with. I’m guessing you do too – unless you choose to be a senior citizen instead – and attend a lot of “organ recitals.”

Conley goes on to say:

“In fact, Modern Elders experience an emancipation from others’ expectations that allows us to transcend needless conventions which means we may appear more youthful and innocent. ‘Neoteny’ is a quality of being that allows certain adults to seem childlike and leads people to remark about how these elders seem so young at heart and timeless.”

See, doesn’t that sound and feel better than carrying a “senior citizen” bullseye on your back.

I can be a Modern Elder as long as I want and make a strong statement against ageism along the way.  There’s really no reason I, or anyone over 50, shouldn’t be a Modern Elder until the universe decides to take the parts back.

We can slow down that inevitability, ditch the monikers and use each day to share the gifts we’ve been given.

And leave the tags for the psychologists and marketers.

I hope this resonates. Let me know below with a comment or drop me an email to gary@makeagingwork.com.

I trust that you are being safe and sensible during these challenging times.  If you haven’t joined our growing list of readers, you can do so  at www.makeagingwork.com.  Sign up for my weekly blog there and receive my free e-book “Achieve Your Full-life Potential:  Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

85/15, 8 of 10, and 114 Years

What’s in a number?

Meet Ron Benfield, Vancouver, WA.

Numbers are a big deal for Ron.

He has been swimming in them for over four decades as a finance executive with several prestigious hospitals and health systems.

I met Ron last fall on the phone while doing business development work with an executive healthcare outplacement and career transition firm, Wiederhold and Associates.

Ron is a previous client of W&A.  My call was a courtesy “catch up” call to nurture an important networking relationship.

In my pre-call prep, I sensed this might not be a typical call.  My first hint was the background picture on his LinkedIn profile (shown above). From database records, I knew Ron had just entered his seventh decade (he’s 61).  Reaching the top of Mount Rainier at, or close, to that age hinted that this could be an interesting conversation.

It turned out to go beyond interesting.

A “third-age” poster child.

Ron is now on my “Wall of Fame” for modeling a purposeful, productive, fulfilling post-career third age.

(Newsflash: There is still a lot of room on the wall for anyone interested).

Starting new at 59

Ron’s four-decade W-2 career is quite notable. He had earned a reputation as a stellar turn-around financial specialist while serving in various C-level (COO, CFO) roles. Pulling hospitals back from the brink of insolvency became his calling card.

Despite his mastery over numbers, there was one that was out of his control.  One that forced his most serious life-pivot.

In his last corporate C-level role, he “had begun to feel the presence of an unwillingness to value a 60-year-old who has seen more things over the fresh views of someone in their 40s.”

He harbored no enthusiasm for the uphill battle to get hired at his age.

Despite being financially set to age 114 (I’ll come back to that number), Ron drop-kicked the idea of retirement, booted his W-2 job (with an ageism-based boost from his last employer) and took his deep expertise and reputation forward into his own business at age 59.

Thus Millwood and Associates was born a year and a half ago, leveraging his team-building and financial turn-around skills to form a consulting firm with seven virtual specialists.  Each has unique skill-sets that enable Millwood to do essentially what he did as a W-2 employee – building and directing a team to find and fix the causes of the financial ailments that beset most hospitals and healthcare systems.

Immediate success? No, but close. It took four months to generate customer interest, a time in which Ron discovered what it was like to put on a selling hat.

Meeting expectations at this point? Ron is blown away with their results.  They have all they can handle and soon may have to turn away business.  And they haven’t reached outside of the state yet!

Ron’s goal with his business is straightforward: to provide his customers with solutions they can carry forward without Millwood being entrenched for the long term.  He wants to hand off the knowledge.  It’s a philosophy that has his existing customers returning for more help in other areas and the high-class problem of having his team and resources stretched.

His vision is to build a company that will sustain itself “post-Millwood and post-Ron” providing his clients with problem-solving skills to find and permanently plug the plethora of financial leaks that exist in the hospital environment.

I could stop here and have a pretty good article, don’t you think?

But that feel-good story isn’t what excited me most about my conversation with Ron.

It was the life perspectives that Ron brought to the story that I found most profound and helpful. I’ll share three.

Time: 85/15 versus 15/85

Long ago, Ron realized one of the trade-offs of working in the corporate world meant giving up control of a very large portion of your time – as much as 80-85% by his estimate.  Meetings, recurring monthly activities, lots of low impact stuff.   The 15-20% left over was where one tried to make a difference.

Enough was enough.  As he evaluated “what’s next” at 59, he knew he had to reverse that and that would only happen outside the W-2 world.

He has reversed that with his new business.  Every day is in his control and virtually every hour within it.

8 of 10 

Ron longed for a setting where he looked forward to going to work 8 out of 10 of his workdays, something that happened more rarely in the W-2 world. Starting this business has become a 10 of 10.  He can’t believe he gets to do what he does each day, get paid for it and move a needle that badly needs moving.

I suggested to him that it sounds like he has achieved the Japanese concept of “ikigai” which translates to “a reason to get up in the morning” or a “reason  for being.” Graphically, it looks like this.  He appears to be in that green-shaded sweet spot.

 

114 years

I was surprised when Ron told me he plans to live to 114, exceeding my goal of reaching 112 1/2.  Ron decided, at 57, that he wanted that to be his midpoint so he doubled it for his longevity goal.

He’s quite serious – and confident.  His confidence is buoyed by an Adventist upbringing and lifestyle.  Raised a Seventh-day Adventist, Ron continues to abide by tenants of the faith which includes a number of things that bode well for extended longevity.  For instance.

  1. He is mostly vegetarian.
  2. He’s a committed exerciser with mountain-climbing, hiking, and biking his favorite activities.
  3. He honors the Saturday sabbath which is devoted to restoration through family time, church, no work, no shopping, and a well-deserved nap or two.
  4. Socially connected – through his business, with his family, church, and within his community.

You may recall that Loma Linda, California – predominantly a Seventh-day Adventist community – was one of the five societies in the world with the highest concentration of centenarians featured in the best-selling book “The Blue Zones” by National Geographic explorer, Dan Buettner.

Ron is still part of a decades-long study of the Adventist lifestyle.

I like his chances of hitting that number.

But most of all I like the model that Ron is following: a balanced lifestyle of labor, leisure, and learning as he moves into his third age.

Ron checks the box for purposeful, fulfilling labor with Millwood.

The leisure box is temporarily not fully checked as business momentum builds, but he has an African trip on the books and several countries selected that he and his wife Joyce plan to visit.

The learning box was checked long ago.  Ron is an avid reader, stays on top of changes within healthcare and does sudoku daily.  He also is an accomplished cello player which he admits he needs to spend more time with because of the mental challenge it presents.

The last box that Ron checks is the “generativity” box.  He is devoted to helping others by sharing what he has learned, in business and in life, with those coming up behind him, whether it be his adult children, friends or aspiring healthcare professionals.  Ron is one of the most active and appreciated networkers in the Wiederhold and Associates executive network, never denying an opportunity to share his experience and knowledge with another W&A network member seeking career counsel.

I came away from my conversation with Ron with a greater appreciation for paying attention to the numbers in my life – especially those involving time.  Our casual treatment of time overlooks its irretrievable nature, a fact that really squeezes in as we pass the mid-point.  I don’t get the sense that Ron is feeling squeezed on that front.

I also have appreciated Ron’s humility.  As I do with anyone that I want to feature, I had him review a draft of this article. Although he agrees on the accuracy, he feels it’s a bit too flattering.  I don’t.  His story just has too much of the message I’m advocating for me not to share details, professional and personal. Sixty isn’t a time for a landing but is a great spot for another take off leveraging acquired professional and life skills and experiences to pay forward and leave something that lives on when the parts are sent back to the universe.

Underneath that humility, Ron is making that happen.

With a 17 year difference in our ages, my 112 1/2 won’t have me around to see if he makes the 114.  Would one or more of you out there make a mental note to check on Ron in 2073 to see if he makes it and send me a text?  Who knows – by then, we may have that capability.

Do you know anybody like Ron Benfeld (maybe it’s you)? Let me know by email to gary@makeagingwork.com.  I really want to feature more stories like Ron’s that draw attention to what we “modern elders” can bring to the table.

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

Enough of this “Life Purpose” thing! Can’t We Get Over It?

Do me a favor. Google “life purpose.”

Go ahead – I’ll wait.

Did you come up with the same number I did: 5,680,000.

Is it really THAT important?

Some would say it’s in the “woo-woo”, “touchy-feely” category crafted to sell books, workshops, and coaching services.

Others would say it’s essential to a life well-lived.

I’ll go with the latter.

The former and latter are working well for Richard Leider, founder of Inventure – The Purpose Company. He’s written three books on the topic and is ranked by Forbes as one of the “Top 5” most respected executive coaches on the planet.

Influential Strategic Coach founder, Dan Sullivan, maintains that people die early for three reasons:

    1. No money
    2. No friends
    3. No purpose

Having coached over 18,000 successful entrepreneurs to success over 40+ years, Dan has observed the power of purpose and knows of what he speaks.

There must be something to it.

What is it anyway?

The University of Minnesota website Taking Charge of Your Health and Wellbeing  describes it this way:

Purpose can guide life decisions, influence behavior, shape goals, offer a sense of direction, and create meaning. For some people, purpose is connected to vocation—meaningful, satisfying work. For others, their purpose lies in their responsibilities to their family or friends. Others seek meaning through spirituality or religious beliefs. Some people may find their purpose clearly expressed in all these aspects of life.

OK, if it’s that important, why do so few end up with one?

Approximately 45% of U.S. employees are not happy in their jobs, according to a 2019 survey by The Conference Board.  Maybe building somebody else’s dream isn’t the most fertile ground for finding a life purpose.

Some find it there – many don’t.

In this era of Bernie, Elizabeth, Peter, and AOC, we seem to be thinking there’s hope in having it found for us.   Just get in line – D.C has the solution to your angst.

Then again, maybe not.

This caption from P. 259 of the book “Younger Next Year” by co-author Dr. Henry Lodge unpacks some interesting insight into that solution (bolding is mine):

“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, enormous numbers of Russian men lost the only structure they had known.  With nothing to replace it, many of them lost their sense of place, of belonging, of matter, of simply being needed or relevant to their families and to their society.  What happened? Within just a few years, life expectancy for Russian men plummeted from sixty-four years to fifty-seven years.  They died limbic deaths. Heart attack and cancer rates soared as did depression, alcoholism, suicide, accident and violent deaths – all cries of limbic agony.  In some ways, what happened in Russia is happening to many of us in retirement, and it’s scary as hell.”

Hmmm – a forced sense of purpose doesn’t seem to have legs.  And the loss, however shallow, is devastating.

We’re sandwiched in a no-sense-of-purpose system.

OK, I may be going off the rails here – please let me know if you think I am.

I’m thinking we lack a “front-end system” that comes anywhere close to broaching the topic of life purpose.

We’re plopped into a classroom with thirty others, told what to learn, how to learn within a system that hasn’t changed in a hundred years.  Conformity is paramount, originality is often unrecognized, stifled.

Harry Chapin – the greatest troubadour ever – picked up on this and put it together in one of his greatest songs: “Flowers Are Red” – enjoy and ponder it here. 

We carry the conformity forward into the 40-year phase of this 20th-century life-cycle model and getta job, getta wife, getta family, getta mortgage, fenced yard, 2 1/2 kids, two cars and a labrador retriever, getta title, getta 401K, and getta gold watch.

A sense of “life purpose” in there? Maybe – evidence says usually not.

Then we back-end it with a wrap-up system called retirement that’s fully encumbered with an 85-year-old process whose purpose is to move us out and into a purposeless life of leisure and self-indulgence.

And then we die young.

Lacking a beginning, middle, and end, life-purpose development doesn’t have much of a chance it seems.  So we “live too short and die too long” in our society.

 

Oliver Wendell Holmes reminded us:

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

It’s not too late!

I’m encouraged.  I believe we are beginning to see the emergence of a focus on “life purpose.”  From this seat, it seems to be coming from those at the mid-life point – that uneasy time of tough questions (Why am I here? Does anybody care?); of waning career interest or opportunity; of empty-nesting; of a deepening sense of life’s finite nature; of a sense of not wanting to waste the acquired wisdom, skills, talents, and experiences on a cruise ship,  beach, golf course or pickle-ball court.

Maybe even a sense of having better answers to the mess the country finds itself in.

We have the tools.

Permit me to link two phrases that we should be pondering in the face of the messiness around us:

“Life purpose” and “Active wisdom”

Unless terminally infected with the narcissism our current culture promotes, we are drawn to serve, to pass on what we know, to lighten a better path for those behind. It’s called “generativity.“  It seems to surface the drive for a life purpose.

It provides the “why.”

“Active wisdom” is a term coined by anthropologist, activist, and writer Mary Catherine Bateson.  She calls it a “new stage” where “wisdom is reaped from years of experience and living.”  She calls it the “most acceptable and positive trait associated with longevity.”

“Active wisdom” brings the “what.”

Not as I did.

I’ll be your poster-child for the wrong path.  I drank the 20th-century Koolaid and barnacled-over my innate talents or any chance for life-purpose immersion for 6 1/2 decades.

But it came, gradually, grudgingly – slowly removing the last vestiges of conformity and the cultural expectations and beliefs that were in the way. It feels right to try to bring forward the mere modicum of my life’s accomplishments and acquired wisdom, season it with legions of mistakes, challenges, and trials and to share it as a light for somebody.

Is there certainty in it all? Not even.

But neither was there on the other path.

I’ll confirm that there’s lots of room on this “road less traveled”  – and that the need is great.

Hop on – you’re wired to make a difference.

Your thoughts, criticisms, compliments, complaints all mean a lot. Leave any or all below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

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

 

What Do Retirement and the Internal Combustion Engine Have In Common? Read On!

I’ve read Fortune magazine cover-to-cover for over 30 years.

It’s bathroom reading and I usually get through each issue about the time the next one arrives.

Sorry – that’s more than you wanted to know. Here’s the point.

I appreciate the thoroughness of their reporting and the professional writing style. I need it to have at least a modicum of awareness of what is going on in the business world globally.

I was intrigued by a small article in this months’ issue which features “20 Ideas That Will Shape the 2020s.”

It’s an article by Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (Whew!)

Ms. Figueres headlines her article:

“We’ll witness the end of the internal combustion engine era.”

The cliff notes of the article are that we will see an explosion of electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles because of the drive for climate change and, more significantly, the tremendous amount of investment in this new industry.  She claims that “the demand for low- or no-emission vehicles is increasing exponentially.”

As she predicts this demise, she says: “That is quite remarkable because the entirety of our economic growth over the last 150 years has come on the back of this technology and the fossil fuels that feed it.”

Perhaps a bit of climate-change-advocate hyperbole. But think about the significance, if true.

I suspect she doesn’t relate to geezers like me whose greatest automotive thrill was my new 1969 Olds 442 380 hp, 6-mile/gallon monster that won a few drag races at the impromptu Coors-fueled (us, not the cars) Midnight Winternationals on I-25 north of Cheyenne, WY.

Or for my brother-in-law, whose gem of a restored ‘67 Chevrolet muscle-car rattles neighbor’s windows at each startup.

Thing is – I believe Ms. Figueres is right.

Hard as it is to imagine, I believe the internal combustion engine is beginning to die a slow death.

Maybe it’s time.  Hard to argue against an electric vehicle (EV) that performs as well with less maintenance while helping Denver’s air be less of the brown, stinky daily occurrence it has become.

I know this is weird, but as I read the article, my one-track mind drew a parallel.

The internal combustion engine is about 150 years old and dying.

The concept of retirement is about 125 years old.  (Otto Von Bismark kick-started it in Germany in the mid-1890s.)

Is it time for it to die also?

I’m no Christiana Figueres and advice is worth what you pay for it, but I’ll stick my neck out and suggest that traditional retirement is dying a slow – and timely – death.

By “traditional” I mean the off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure, vocation-to-vacation, no-work, golden-years-into-the-sunset type of retirement that still dominates mid-life dreams.

Timely?  Yeah.

Here in the U.S., we still hang on doggedly to an 85-year old relic that was established in 1935 to move older people out of the workforce to make room for the younger folks who were demonstrating in the streets.  We hung an arbitrary, artificial finish line of 65 on it at a time when the average American didn’t make it to 62.

Irrelevant then.  More irrelevant now with average life spans 18 years longer.

We’ve entrenched the number 65 in our minds like a road sign in concrete.   We’re hailed if we retire before it and scorned as an “unfortunate” if we miss it, despite its irrelevance.

How many other 85-year old concepts do you still have operating in your life? (OK – maybe you still play Monopoly which was also introduced in 1935.)

Traditional retirement should die.

Here are a few things that predict it’s demise:

  • A 2016 GAO report estimated that 48% of those over 55 had zero put away in a 401K.  With the demise of corporate pension plans, well over half of the American population are financially unprepared to retire. Some form of post-career work for many is inevitable.
  • We’re living longer – by a bunch.  The prospect of Leisure World and thirty years of bingo, bridge and boche ball isn’t resonating.
  • It’s an unnatural act that’s counter to our biology.  We either grow or decay.  Retire translates from a Middle French verb that means “retreat, go backward.”  That sounds like decay.
  • We’ve learned that work and continued learning are keys to longevity, that “winding down” comes with few rewards.
  • We’ve seen enough of the extended morbidity and early frailty visited on generations before us.
  • We want to finish out with more meaning having left a footprint that lives beyond us. We’re beginning to seek roadmaps to make that happen.

 

That’s what reality and research are telling us.  Fewer can do it; fewer want to do it; we’re beginning to concede that it’s not the smartest thing to do if we want our biology to do its job for as long as it’s designed to do it.

The alternative to the internal combustion engine has been defined. The alternative to traditional retirement is evolving.

Encumbered by tradition, the pressure of cultural expectations, old “bad ideas, myths, messages, and models,” and biological naivete, the roadmap to the alternative to traditional retirement is still fuzzy.

But a roadmap is developing.

Personally, I’m encouraged to see the emergence of two terms in the dialog about this changing retirement scene: unretirement and semi-retirement.

For many, the first is leading to the second as the lights come on to the downsides of retirement. Some step straight into the second as they enter the third age of life with the realization that they don’t have a time-stamp on the back of their neck and that there is still much to do.

Either way, it’s a trend line with culture-changing, nation-saving power and implications.

The death of the internal combustion engine will help save the planet.

The death of traditional retirement can help save a deteriorating culture and a divided nation.  In its place, we can resurrect what anthropologist, author, and activist Mary Catherine Bateson calls “active wisdom.”  Wisdom “reaped from years of experience and living.”  She calls it “the most acceptable and positive trait associated with longevity.”

What’s your plan for your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s?  It will likely involve an EV.  But will it involve AW – active wisdom?

I’m a small voice in a vital revolution. Come add your voice – help needed and there’s lots of room!

We value your opinions and feedback. Leave a comment below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

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

 

 

 

 

 

Are You the Author of Your Life?  Probably not.

 

Author: The person who originated or gave existence to anything and whose authorship determines responsibility for what was created. (Wikipedia)

Last week, I finished an excellent book by NPR journalist Barbara Bradley Hagerty “Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife.” One page received my personal trifecta treatment for importance and follow up – totally highlighted, paper-clipped, and tabbed with a blue tab.

A comment by an Israeli psychiatrist, Carlo Strenger, earned the page that status:

“To become the author of our own lives, we need to accept that we have not chosen the base materials of who we are.  We can only choose to shape them with a clear view of our strengths and weaknesses.”

It was the “author of our own lives” and the “base materials” part of the sentence that snagged me.

It took me back two quarter-centuries. Egad! What does it say when you can begin to think of your life in quarter centuries?

That was my college graduation year -1969.

After nine years and runs at three different majors, I made it to the stage to receive the faux-leather-bound document that is now God-knows-where. Enough credit-hours for at least one Master-degree illogically spread across civil engineering (one year), journalism (1 ½ years) and, finally, a B.S. in Business Administration (3 years).

OK, I’m sure you did the math: 9 years minus 5 ½ years = 3 ½ years.  Yep – a full third of a decade between college stints spent in aimless wandering and squandering while I confirmed that the male brain doesn’t reach maturity until around age 24 which was when I returned to campus for the final run.

 

Base materials?

I may be a crowd of one, but I don’t recall a professor or advisor in my final months before graduation ever uttering anything resembling “author of your life”, “base materials” or “strengths and weaknesses.”

Conventional counsel at that point was to sign up for as many campus interviews as you can with the companies that offered the best combo of salary and location.

Look for a fit with my “base materials”?  Uh, say what? Who knew I had any, least of all me.

So, I ended up leaving Wyoming for Pennsylvania and a career-launch selling ceiling tile.

Try that one on for excitement!!

The 20-40-20 Plan

I, and every campus compatriot I hung with, jumped on the same wagon and life-cycle plan. The one that prevailed then and still does. The one we had been indoctrinated into by parents, professors, and peers: 20 years of learning, 40 years of earning, 20 years of retirement nirvana.

Aside from some basic and mandatory IQ and basic skills tests in junior high and high school (which, BTW, suggested I should remain on my uncle’s Farmall driving in circles), I don’t recall ever being challenged to determine what my “base materials” were back then.

So the author for the first 20 years (27 for me) was cultural expectations: getta degree; getta job.

For the next forty, it was the same author but with the expectations ratcheted up: getta wife; getta house; getta family;  getta mini-van;  getta Labrador retriever; getta title; getta 401K; getta retirement.

Base materials, strengths and weaknesses be damned! Onward we marched because, well, that’s what we were expected to do. If latent, closeted desires or dreams tried to surface along the way, we tamped them down in favor of the model.

That is until we could no longer.  For some, and increasingly common today, the model collapsed with a job loss.

For others, it was an existential thing such as an internal force that calls for something with more meaning or realizing that we were at a professional dead end.

Strenger brings an interesting perspective to this.  He says that “changing courses in midlife is not a luxury but an ‘existential necessity.’”

I’m a career coach working with professionals wrestling with a mid-life course correction – some by choice (internal), some not (external, as in blindside gut-punch).  I’ve never suggested to a professional that has been gut-punched that they are going through an “existential necessity.”

Nor have I suggested that it’s time that they become the author of their life.

Maybe I need to get some guts about suggesting both.  I think Strenger is onto something from his years of working with clients in transition.

He makes the point that if people are to thrive and not just survive in midlife, they must make the change.  To fail to do so will exact a price.

Strenger states: “If people don’t take a hard look at what kind of changes they want to make, in the end, those changes are going to be forced on them.  The basic idea is: Don’t wait until the changes are forced on you.  Be proactive.”

What is that price if we don’t?

If life authorship has been relinquished to cultural expectations, there is a risk, in Strenger’s words, “of resigning ourselves to our growing limitations and throwing in the towel at 65” and “trudging on to retirement, something that almost no one can afford to do.”

In other words, succumbing to retirement – that ultimate casualty – when it’s likely there are 20-30 years of productive life left buoyed by an accumulation of assets built over forty, fifty, sixty years.

At mid-life, we have enough biography to know ourselves, what we’re good at and where we stink, what empowers us and what doesn’t.

Our choices become (1) letting that biography author us into the next phase honoring our essence (Strenger calls it our “thus and no other”) or (2) remain authorless, captive of cultural expectations, and accepting that we haven’t chosen the “base materials” of who we are.

Slow starter

Strenger’s words were “déjà vu all over again” for me.  My “base materials” were closeted until I reached my 60s and, even then, slow to emerge.

Thirty-five years of meeting cultural expectations in the corporate world gave way at age sixty to an attempt at entrepreneurism by starting my own healthcare recruiting business.  Within that experience came a gradual evolution that surfaced my “base materials” and “strengths and weaknesses” and the authoring of the life that I’ll finish out with – writing, coaching, teaching, speaking on issues involving achievement of a meaningful, fulfilling post-career life.

I can relate to how difficult it is to accept your “base materials” when they don’t line up with cultural indoctrinations. Despite what a plethora of personality and strengths assessments that I took through my 40s and 50s told me about myself, I rejected their consistent message and remained outside of my “base materials”  for nearly four decades in favor of the cultural mold I stepped into in 1969.

Steering between Scylla and Charybdis 

Strenger invokes the idiom from Greek mythology of sailing the strait between Scylla (six headed rock monster) and Charybdis (dangerous whirlpool) to make the point that a mid-life effort to recapture authorship and resurrect “base materials” calls for some careful steering.

He refers to Scylla as the choice of “resigning ourselves to our growing limitations and throwing in the towel at 65” (retirement) and Charybdis as “the illusion that, in midlife, we can enjoy ‘boundless change’ which requires a ground-up radical transformation” (the lawyer who becomes a chef or the doctor who becomes an organic farmer), the latter being “more seductive and more likely to flame out.”

Successfully steering between the two can come from putting accumulated skills and experiences up against innate – and perhaps, closeted – talents and dreams to see“how these can be reconfigured in a way that would be more appropriate to your needs today, that will be more satisfactory to you”, as Strenger suggests.

This can be tough!

This last year, I’ve had the good fortune to engage several mid-life C-suite healthcare executives who are in transition, most from an unexpected gut-punch that is common in this eternally volatile industry. Being laid-off unexpectedly at 52 or 55 or 58 and facing an increasingly difficult and competitive C-suite job market brings considerable angst.  A lofty lifestyle combined with being sandwiched between kids in college and aging parents places “provision” ahead of “aspiration” for most.  It’s rare for a conversation to head toward a discussion of “base materials” and anything other than hanging in with more of the same until time to throw in the towel, at or around 65.

It reminds me again of how much of a thief the number “65” is.

 

 

WARNING!  Retirement May Mess With Your Oligodencrocytes!

Oligo what?

Hey, I didn’t know we had them, did you?   Yet another something in the “cytes” category roaming around our bodies.

I found out I had oligodencrocytes as I was slogging through my second reading of a challenging book entitled “Deep Work; Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” by Georgetown University computer science professor, Cal Newport.

I bought the book in hopes of finding an inexpensive antidote to my  ADD and “shiny object syndrome.”

I’m thinking 3-4 times through this book will have saved me the stigma and expense of the therapy I really need.

So it was that on page 36 of “Deep Work”, I found out that I have oligodencrocytes.  We all do.

Why should we care? 

Well, we don’t have to – and most people don’t.   Can we survive without them?  Probably not.  I’m no expert, but I believe that if you don’t have them at some level, you are dead.

To understand oligodencrocytes, what they do and why they are important, we have to climb a notch higher in basic neurology and understand that we have a process going on in our brain called myelination.

It turns out our brain produces a fatty tissue called myelin that wraps around neurons as we use them, acting like an insulator that allows that neuron’s cells to fire cleaner and faster.   Oligodencrocytes are cells that trigger that myelin.  The more you use a neural circuit, the more “olis” you have that are producing more myelin to wrap and thicken that circuit.

I’m now thinking these little “oli” rascals are pretty darn important in where we end up in life.  And all this time I didn’t know they were there standing ready to help dismantle my self-inflicted ADD.

I’m likely butchering the neurological description, but I think it’s safe to say that each of us has, between our temples, a labyrinth of skinny, semi-thick and (maybe) thick neuronal circuits.  All determined by WHAT we think about and HOW MUCH we think about that WHAT.

The more we use a neural circuit to focus on one particular idea or activity, the more “olis” we ignite to help wrap another layer of myelin around that circuit.

Thick or thin?

Most of us are walking around with a mess of thin and semi-thick neuronal circuits.  Few of us have really thick circuits.  And then we marvel at – or maybe even resent – the prolific perfection of Tiger Woods, Daniel Day-Lewis, YoYo Ma, Stephen King, Jerry Rice, etc., not understanding that they simply have myelinated themselves to a very small number of very thick neuronal circuits – by what they think about and do every day, in-depth, deliberately.

I first became aware of the significance of myelination having read about it ten years ago in an excerpt from the 2008 book by Fortune editor Geoff Colvin entitled “Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else”.  With my curiosity peaked by the boldness of the title, I subsequently read Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers: The Story of Success” and Daniel Coyle’s “The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown”.

All three books talk about the significant role of myelination in achieving success and mastery.  The message from the books – and subsequently confirmed by tons of data and research – is that there are no prodigies, only “deep work” and “deliberate practice” behind the outliers on the performance and success scales.

In other words, high achievers are prolific “oli” and myelin generators.  By choice and design, not by chance.

When I first read about this years ago, I remember I had just decided that I was going to learn to play fingerstyle acoustic guitar after avoiding it for 40+ years of playing only plectrum-style jazz guitar.   I had dabbled a bit with it but found it took too much effort and was a distraction from my love for learning and playing jazz ballads.

But then I discovered an Australian guitarist by the name of Tommy Emmanuel when someone sent me a link to a YouTube recording of him playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.

I was immediately mentally transformed.  I could no longer reject the challenge of learning fingerstyle having witnessed it performed by a master. I decided to become a student of Tommy Emmanuel, which included not just learning technique from his CD, DVD, and online tutorials but also understanding him as a person (I’ve met him twice), what drives him and what it took for him to become what most consider to be the best acoustic guitar player on the planet.

As I struggled to make both hands do what felt very unnatural and uncomfortable while asking my brain to sync them up, I began to appreciate that this wasn’t going to happen without some serious myelination which, in turn, wasn’t going to happen without serious “deep work” and “deliberate practice”.

As I immersed myself in Tommy’s world, I set a goal of learning 10% of what he has forgotten, knowing that if I did just that, I would have put myself at a level achieved by few guitar players.

Tommy Emmanuel is highly myelinated.  As I write, he is 64.  He started playing guitar at age 4 and hasn’t looked back; he taught himself from Chet Atkins records and subsequently become one of four guitarists in the world to be designated “Certified Guitar Player” by Chet; he performs 300 days a year globally, practices every day and vows “to be better tomorrow than I am today.”

I can just imagine the thickness of that neural circuit and the number of “olis” he’s burned through to have his brain and hands do the seemingly impossible.

Myelin isn’t permanent.

I’ve learned another thing about myelin along the way.  It isn’t permanent.  After several years of pretty disciplined deep and deliberate practice on the acoustic guitar, I’ve had to set it aside for the last several months due to a painful arthritic condition in my left thumb, a vital digit for trying to mimic Tommy Emmanuel.

Any attempt to resurrect a favorite Tommy song on my 1966 Gibson Hummingbird only generates frustration on top of the pain since it’s too painful to complete any of the songs I worked so hard to learn. It will require a joint replacement. a restart, and another commitment to deep work and deliberate practice to get back.

That once relatively thick neuronal circuit has gone skinny.

I’ll get it back.  In the meantime, I’m stimulating my “olis” and myelinating another circuit – my writing circuit.

I haven’t done serious research on “olis” but I’m pretty confident that they will stay with me as long as I want to put them to work.  I know that I can build new neurons as long as I live if I work at it. I believe scientists called it “neurogenesis”.  I take that to mean I’ve got “olis” ready to do their thing if I’ll activate them.

Dr. Roger Landry, preventive medicine physician, former Air Force flight surgeon and author of  “Live Long, Die Short: A Guide to Authentic Health and Successful Aging” points out that:

” Atrophy of the brain used to be viewed as a side effect of aging. Now, we know this may simply be a lack of use.  When we use the skills and knowledge we have, the many connections in the brain remain in the best shape they can be. Don’t use them, and they become more difficult to use through a process known as synaptic pruning, in which the brain atrophies in areas where these functions are rarely used.  Neuroplasticity and effective neurogenesis can only occur when the brain is stimulated by environment or behavior.”

There you have it – my Tommy Emmanual channel is being”synaptically pruned”.

Is retirement good for your oligodencrocytes?

The last sentence in Dr. Landry’s quote took me back to a number of retirement conversations I’ve had over the last year with recently retired or soon-to-be-retired C-level healthcare executives. Boredom is one of the most common concerns expressed by these high-functioning leaders as they enter this phase of life.

I think I’m within reasonable neurological boundaries to say that boredom is a lack of neurogenesis because retirement, for most, is a transition from an environment where the “brain is stimulated by environment and behavior” along with active oligodencrocyte/myelin production to one that starts skinnying up some pretty valuable neuronal circuits.

A multi-decade investment of “olis” and myelin is allowed to waste away. A new imbalance of leisure versus learning kicks in that isn’t conducive to maintaining or cranking that biological partnership back up to form newer thick circuits.

In other words, retirement may mess with your oligodencrocytes – and, in turn, with your myelination and enable “synaptic pruning” to take thick back to thin.

I wouldn’t want to infer that retirement may end up wasting a lot of talent, wisdom, and experience, but  – – – well, OK, that’s exactly what I’m saying!

Hey, I get it if you have zero interest in re-myelinating some of the circuits that you myelinated for decades in your job, more out of necessity than desire.  Like herding the cats that were your staff.  Or pushing through unrealistic budget creation.  Or jousting with board members.  Or writing grant proposals.  Or – – – – – –

– – -you know what you were good at then that you don’t want to do more of.

But embedded in all that accumulated experience and talent deployment, I’ll just bet there are some residual semi-thick circuits that still fire your jets, screaming for a dose of “olis”, ready to myelinate.

Drifting into retirement without a non-financial plan – which 2 of 3 new retirees do – sets the stage for dormant “olis” and de-myelination at a time when the combination of wisdom, experience, and talent are at optimum levels.

I think we can agree that life is essentially just a series of choices.  The cultural influences affecting the retirement or third age phase of life often lead us to choices counter to our biology and neurology.

Brain atrophy (READ: de-myelination) is one of those choices.

It’s a time for a new take-off, not a landing.  And your “olis” and myelin stand ready to help the re-launch.

I would love your comments.  Scroll down and let me know what you think.  If you haven’t signed up for my weekly articles like this one, you can do so at www.makeagingwork.com.  When you join our rapidly growing “tribe”, I’ll send you a free e-book entitled “Achieve Your Full-life Potential:  Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”  

Have an outrageous 2020!!