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Retirement Rx – Passion/Purpose Quiz

Passion = Intense, driving or overmastering feeling or conviction

Purpose = Set up as an object or end to be attained

Questions about retirement:

1. Have you thought about what you want to achieve in retirement?
2. Do you have purposeful goals for your second career?
3. Have you thought about who you want to be and how would you like to be remembered?
4. Do you know how you are going to accomplish your objectives?
5. How many things do you currently feel passionate about? Can you identify the purposes behind your passion?
6. What are the activities you do that you find completely absorbing? What things do you do that you get lost in?
7. Are your purposes easily attainable? Does it surprise you that they shouldn’t be?
8. Can you list five, ten or more purposeful undertakings that will serve you well from the present right on through your final farewell?
9. Do you have passions that make you available to people, as well as societal and environmental needs? Do you give more than you expect in return?
10. Do you have passions that will promote a healthy lifestyle?
11. Are you thinking ahead to a second career passion that will weather the storms of possible and probable age related limitations?

If you look at this list of questions seriously, you will understand why financial planning seems easy compared to finding answers to this stuff!!

I challenge my baby boomer friends to chew on theses questions and write down your answers honestly. Then reflect on what needs to happen now to get to a more successful retirement stage later.

I know I am and it is hard but worthwhile work.

Retirement Rx – Here’s to Your Health

Quotes:

In health there is freedom…health is the first of all liberties…Health, wealth and the pursuit of happiness

Healthy lifestyle was ranked as second most important after financial planning in order to have a great retirement.

After age 60, genetics have little to do with longevity. It is all about lifestyle.

As we age, good health requires the full participation of the individual. I take care of myself because I know I am my own responsibility. My best doctor is a balanced diet, regular exercise, mental stimulation,and moderation in diet.

Best ways to keep pounds off

1. Eat breakfast
2. Eat moderately and know what you are eating
3. Weigh yourself daily
4. Move everyday
5. Bonus – Drink a glass of wine and eat a piece of chocolate
6. Don’t eat after dinner

Laughter is important – kindergarten age children laugh about 300 times a day…adults only laugh about 17 times a day

Mental Health Tip – For my mental health, I identify the times I am the most content, them I expand on those times and repeat them as much as possible. On the other hand, I try to identify the times i least enjoy and reduce or eliminate them as much as possible.

People who think they have no time for exercise will sooner or later have more than enough time for lifestyle related illness.

The quotes above say it all, the work is waking up every day and following them.

I have a great health coach as a daughter who is on a sabbatical but will be glad to help you in January 2013 when she returns…she has certainly helped me!

Retirement Rx – Kicking Back

Quotes:

With all the time provided by retirement, we often get our goals accomplished in six to twelve months.

On the whole, age comes more gently to those who have some doorway into the abstract world – art or philosophy or learning -regions where the years are scarcely noticed and young and old can meet in a pale, truthful light.

Retirement to do lists feel long when you are keeping your day job but are short if you go into part-time work or full-time retirement. Usually it includes fixing, painting, learning a skill or traveling a place or two. Given “day job” energy put to them, they get done rather quickly…then what? That is what I am trying to figure out!

The abstract world is a good idea. It likely won’t be art or philosophy…my art consists mostly of stick men and my mind is too simple for philosophy.

The abstract pursuit will likely be more serious learning, specifically about my faith. I have been mostly a weekend and study group learner about the Bible. I get humbled by those that can speak their words by book/chapter/verse of the Bible. Not that the quoting equals faith…it is just clear that the people who can do this know where to go to explain the reason for their words.

That is the “pale, true light” I hope to be in!!

Retirement Rx – Friends and Family

Quotes:

In retirement, social connections need to be watched and worked at as much as finances and health

Men are particularly bad off as most career related relationships end

Husband and wife adjustment period can be from six to eighteen months

During the transition period, spouses can feel like they are growing apart as you create replacement interests

Try to remember your “crazy in love” period and get back to it

Social connections can be assumed and sometimes ignored. They are your friends and family. They will always be there for you whenever you are ready for them…or will they? At some level I think they will but as you morph into different phases or retirement and adjust your life/lifestyle accordingly, they need to be in the mix of what is happening. In some ways they can serve as guides to you from their own experiences but generally they just need to be there understanding what you are thinking and why.

Say you vacation annually with friends and decide in retirement that you cannot afford it, they need to understand the change is not about them and new ways to enjoy time together need to be found. If friends and family expect your retirement is new-found time that will be spent with them and you decide you want to use it pursuing a new passion, they need to see the decision evolve in your thinking so they can be behind your new-found interest instead of slighted. The potential scenarios are endless and staying closely connected in the process in the answer.

The idea that men have more trouble in career transition than women to me is obvious. Most men have relationships based on common interest or activity….when commonality ends, so do the relationships. Fortunately, or unfortunately, my career has been defined by organizational change management with people moving in and out of my workplace…mostly out! Very long close relationships have not been developed so the transition will be easier for me than most. For many, I can see that is not the case and I see serious separation pains as they move on.

The career transition period for the marriage relationship is the one the book spent the most time on. A story I once heard (not in the book) is of a wife who didn’t believe the time was right for the husband to retire so she set up his favorite chair in the garage and informed him that was where he was to go to during the day if he would not be going into the office. I hope to avoid that fate! Keeping in touch with each other through the process and speaking every feeling seems to be the only answer, even when is hurts or is scary.

Ideas on spousal impact the book discusses include: 1) what are you going to do all day 2) what if you don’t like me as much when we spend more time together 3) why do you want to do anything but spend more time with me in retirement 4) what is this going to do to life as we know it 5) I have a schedule so don’t expect me to change it because you are around…and many more real life concerns. My solution is to practice the future as you see it coming in the present and see how it goes. Spend even more time together and confirm you like each other even more, not less. Slowly develop the new interests now and see if you want to do them together, solving the more time together issue at the same time. Agree that personal interests are important to each of you and spend a lot time showing interest in each others pursuits, sharing the stories if not the time.

All this being said, I can see the six month adjustment period as real. I am hoping it will be shorter due to the “practicing the future” plan.

Finally, the quote suggests to try to restore the “crazy in love” period. I am not sure when mine ever ended. Maybe they mean the stay up late watching movies/reading piled on a couch, volleying tennis balls back and forth for hours, doing spontaneous things that made no sense to anyone else but you or just getting in the car together and going somewhere for the heck of it. Working on it….hope all you baby boomers out there are too!!

Retirement Rx – Change is Good?

Quotes:

Resiliency – The capacity to cope with hindrances and challenges and to rise above them

Build a resiliency plan for the next phase of life:

• Give yourself time to grieve
• Write and talk about it
• Create a community
• Ease out over time

Doc’s resiliency prescription:

• Develop and maintain an independent spirit
• Cultivate insight
• Know when to get help and get it
• Re-frame your life and experiences
• Create your life plan and refer to it often
• Simplify

55 years of life and experiences have provided resiliency. Some of the resiliency was developed through intentional actions/adventures. Some can be defined as “life happened”. Both have brought resiliency for my everyday life and it helps me when perceived or real crisis occurs. The resiliency I have developed tells me when and how much to react to all of it.

The reading adventure I am on is intended to create thoughts that develop some intellectual resiliency to get ready for change that is coming for me and most in my generation. I am working through the grieving process of what once was and what currently is from a career perspective. I don’t have much resiliency in this area as I have usually been the initiator of change rather than the victim of it. Nevertheless, I am working on it.

Writing and talking about it is what the readers of this Blog are suffering through. Originally I was just going to do a ”good old-fashioned journal” about it privately but I have found it therapeutic to hear what others have to say on the various subjects as I move through the them.

Creating a community through my church has been the most important action to date. I am surrounded by wise and encouraging people, some further ahead in the same process, some moving along in parallel and some trailing behind trying to make sense of thing along with me. If I would recommend any step first, this would be it!

Easing out over time has a physical and mental component. The physical phase is simply trying to relax after hours and on vacation. In the past turning off the calendar has been difficult. Both times of rest were interrupted often with urgent work meetings. Progress is being made.

The mental part has me torn. The Bible tells us to do our life’s work as if I am doing it unto the Lord. That means mentally checking out while still on the payroll, even just a little bit, is hard to justify. The best I can say I am doing is spreading the feeling of responsibility to peers and co-workers, which would have been a good practice long ago but has always been hard for me. I am finding others like it.

From the last quote, the “re-frame your life” is the hard work one right now.When life has been framed as full-time dad, financial driver of company change, keep pace with wireless technology, earn a good income and win at all you do, re-framing that is taking some time. The hard wiring of the brain is tough to change!

Anyone out there been through it/going through it that can provide helpful tips?

Retirement Rx – Quote for the Day

Let us be grateful for people who make us happy…they are charming gardeners who make our souls bloom!

Marcel Proust

Retirement Rx – Gratitude Attitude

Quotes:

Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude towards it, for that determines our success or failure

Explanatory style – A way of thinking about the cause of a situation in our lives or how we explain why things happen to us in the way they do. Explanatory style is formed in childhood and unless deliberate steps are taken to change a negative style, it will last a lifetime

Maintain a gratitude attitude:

• Identify your ungrateful thoughts
• Formulate gratitude supporting thoughts
• Substitute grateful thoughts
• Translate your inner thoughts into outward action

I love the rhythm of “gratitude attitude”. As I said in the last writing, the simple phrases stick in my head better than long writings for that reason. Starting by recalling God’s grace to us will get you there every time. It is the forgetting of that provision of grace that gets the attitude going to the wrong direction….the attitude of entitlement.

What does the “gratitude attitude” have to with the next phase of life is ….everything! Having enough assets/income to move into the next phase of life has a lot to do with the attitude you take about it. If you believe God provides all you have had and will have, the gratitude will be there. If you provide it to yourself, gratitude will be harder to come by. When I get in conversations with others about what is next in life, this is an assumption that comes up early and often.

The idea of “explanatory style” intrigues me. I had not heard the term before. I watch and listen to people more than I used to when an event occurs, good or bad. If “play-by-play” announcers existed in life, listening to different people at the same event would make you believe you were in two different places experiencing two different things. Some see the details of the event, some the overall, some see the people in the center and others those people on the fringes. Based on where they are looking and the explanatory style they have, I don’t know how courts ever have reliable witnesses to the same crime.

At the end of a football play, some see a great tackle and another sees a cheap shot. At a ballet, one sees great motion and another sees unnecessary damage to feet. And on social issues….I won’t go there in an election year but just watch the “play-by-play” on that one.

It is interesting to think how your childhood affects your perspective and how, by purposefully pursuing a gratitude attitude, things could feel different

What then about retirement? Do you see a loss of significance of your career or a beginning of a new adventure? Fear of having too little or a gratefulness for what you have? A time of growing old or a time to use a lifetime of experience to make a difference, maybe at a slower pace? Are you thankful for what is coming or dreading the changes it will bring?

It will all be about getting more of the “gratitude attitude”!

Retirement Rx – Making a Life

Quotes:

Chinese Proverb on life’s hope: Someone to love, Something to do, and something to look forward to

Almost all respondents to the survey that indicated that they had given thought to their financial security ahead of time were able to cover the cost of their retirement.

The difference between moderately successful and highly successful retirees was the amount of energy devoted to non-financial planning

Move from “making a living” to “making a life”…Where do you want to live, who do you want to be with, how will you spend your time

I sometimes wonder if Chinese life is as simple as some of their famous proverbs. I hope it is but somehow think western civilization is changing their approaches to life.

That all being said, I love this first quote as a life purpose said plain and simple. I tend to attach better to sayings than long writings…simple words for simple minds I guess. If everyone could pursue and achieve having someone to love, having something to do and having hope, the world would truly be a better place. The people I know that look like they have achieved these three simple things (at least looking from the outside), appear to live life well regardless of their age.

The second quote on planning financially to me describes a self-fulfilling prophesy….costs can be successfully covered in retirement. I believe one of two things happens 1) the amounts of money needed to provide them the retirement of their dreams is accumulated or 2) the planning created realistic expectations going into retirement and they were able to cover the costs of retirement through living within the means of what they had accumulated and expected. Either way, financial success in retirement can be declared ….through planning as opposed to rolling the dice and hoping for the best when the time comes.

The third quote is at the heart of the “AHA!!” moments I have had reading the book. I had thought some about what my next thing would be when I leave my first career….improved golf game, lose some weight, work out more, complete projects on my “honey do” list, maybe travel leisurely rather than in “vacation for a week” mode…..

The book has brought a deeper realization that many of those thoughts are good, necessary, noble and shallow thoughts for a successful next phase. The heavy lifting work is getting renewed for a next phase that for me will likely be very different in intensity, expectation and purpose than the first. Right now most of the reason for work involves inventing new ways for people to communicate wirelessly and feeding my family.

A lot of what I have been reading about these past months is renewing my mindset to more purposeful living daily and changing people’s lives positively more than evolving society’s technology. The new purpose is higher, more noble and I intend to be more faith/spiritually based. Whatever it turns out to be, my experiences at work will take me part of the way but planning intentionally I expect will take me across the finish line (an earlier reading reminded me there isn’t a beginning unless you bring and end to something).

The last quote of shifting from ”making a living” to “making as life” wraps up the hard work for many in my generation. We set out to make a living, become independent, never quit, do purposeful things, achieve results and love well along the way. Making a life while not worrying about making a living is hard based on years of hard-wiring the “make a living” part. For many, it feels like quitting the life you have held so dearly.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe I have “made a life” while “making a living”, a life I am pleased and delighted  to have lived/continue to live. It just has never been a full-time endeavor. That is the transition I am trying to imagine……how do you do it all day, every day without the “making the living” part being in the way as it so often has!

The heavy lifting work continues………

Retirement Rx – Small Investment

Those that think about retirement often spend most of their time discussing financial investments in terms of stocks and bonds. The investment I will be discussing came off a book clearance table and cost a whopping six dollars. It was a random purchase that Dianne made at a Meijers. It was a small investment in retirement but one that is proving to be very valuable.

The book is based on a small study of patients in one doctor’s practice. It explored the characteristics of those in retirement, how they prepared for it and how they were doing in it. There are lots of stats and lists of ideas. I will share the ones that hit me the most and how they are changing what I do to prepare for the next phase of my life.

The first fact which I had thought about some but this graphically displayed is the change in life expectancies. In 1776 the life expectancy was 35 years ( I would already be dead and gone), in 1920 it was 55 years and in 2000 it is 85 years. Life span expectations have almost tripled since our country was founded. Since 1920, retirement age expectation has changed little but the life span has…translated, that means in 2000 life spans the retirement years may exceed the career years!!

The book suggests there are four phases to retirement. The first is the final preparation for retirement that starts at age 58. The second phase is shifting into semi-retirement around age 67, full retirement should begin around age 72 and restricted full retirement begins around age 78. I have always been an overachiever so my begin dates are a little earlier than his schedule with only the final phase being the same as nature is taking over by then. Through the book he talks about what he sees in each phase so that will come later. Regardless of the ages, the concepts apply.

Eight traits he noted from his surveys that characterize successful retirees are:

1 – Planning financially and non-financially

2 – It’s all about the attitude

3 – Accept change

4 – Help from your friends

5 – Enjoy your leisure time

6 – Healthy Lifestyle

7 – Passion and purpose

8 – Belief system

The individual items may be intuitively obvious to many but putting them in one place and being honest about readiness on each one has set me on several missions. The fact financial preparation is only one half of one item was my wake up. Retirement planning for me had been about how much is enough and little about what do I do about life when I have enough (if there is ever enough).

I see the need to aggressively work at the non-financial part of the planning as it has been the most neglected. The reading/blog is part of that effort. I am zigzagging through thoughts hoping to be in the right attitude for the second, semi-retirement stage. My urgency is that I will likely be entering that stage a lot earlier than the book suggested age of 67 and stay in that stage for more years than they suggest (five years). The help from friends part of the plan is their contribution of readings to help renew my mind, refresh my soul and refocus my life.

Healthy lifestyle, phase I, is underway. The eating habits are improving and my memory is fading of the foods I used to consume and the associated volumes. Phase II will begin this month. I do some walking already but exercise will be added in greater and more frequent amounts.

The Belief system  part of the list is the most disappointing part. Although I agree the spiritual part of life is crucial, the book suggests tha any belief system (spiritual or philosophical) will do. My personal beliefs do not follow that thinking. There is only one true God and other system are man-made gods. That being said, I agree spiritual preparation is required for me to be prepared for the next phase of life.

The three items on the list causing the most difficulty are enjoying leisure time, accepting change and passion/purpose. All are inter-related for me. Passion/purpose has involved many things with the work I do consuming its fair share. It has at times been an impediment to leisure time as I have had more work-cations than vacations. Learning to have leisure time for its own sake, uninterrupted by work means a lot of change for me. Getting new passions to replace my work will be challenging as my career is high-speed and ever-changing. Finding a semi-retirement interest that will meet the requirement will be challenging. That journey continues through the reading and experimenting with ideas but so far nothing is clear.

The book travels through many more ideas, expanding on those above and adding to them……..so until next time……