Canadian Boomers Invest in Life
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Compton, Heather, 1954-
Retirement rocks! : lifestyle, relationship,
finances : Canadian boomers invest in life / Heather
Compton and Dennis Blas.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-9812573-0-3
1. Retirement--Planning.
I. Blas, Dennis, 1949- II. Title.
HQ1063.2.C3C65 2010 646.7'9 C2009-906875-3
Canadian Boomers Invest in Life
Text copyright © 2009 by Heather Compton and Dennis Blas
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be published or reproduced in any form, including electronically and on-line, except when expressly permitted in writing by the authors.
Published by: Retirement Rocks! updated - 2011
Calgary, Alberta, Canada - www.retirementrocks.ca
The authors have made every effort to provide accurate information (telephone numbers, internet addresses, financial and related data, etc.). Neither the publisher nor the authors assume any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher and the authors do not have any control over, and do not assume any responsibility for third party web-sites and their content.
Contents
Introduction
► Invest in Your Life
Outlook and Vision
Life Cornerstones
Create a Life List
► Lifestyle → what life looks like
Meaning and Purpose
Life Transitions
Health Comes First
More Work or Volunteering
Activities and Hobbies
Travel
► Relationship → the foundation
On Your Own
Life Partners
Friendships
Parenting
Three Generations
► Finances → money matters
How Much is Enough
Net Worth Statement
Cash Flow Statement
Company Pensions
Government Benefits
Personal Savings and Investments
Tax Strategies in Retirement
Estate Planning and Life Insurance
► Conclusion
Making a Difference
About the Authors
► References and Suggested Reading
Life Design and Planning Tools – www.retirementrocks.ca
Introduction
Bookstore shelves are crowded with books on retirement so why do we feel we have anything new to add? Our experience is that authors are either psychologists or social workers with a focus on the mental preparedness, the “soft” issues for upcoming retirees, or they are financial planners and advisors whose primary focus is on the nest egg. We decided to bring all of the factors together.
In Heather’s role as a financial advisor, she had the privilege of seeing literally hundreds of clients navigate this next life stage we call retirement and they profoundly taught her that while money was important, it certainly wasn’t the first agenda item to focus on when thinking about “what’s next”. Stepping up and writing our own book allowed us to focus on the elements we felt lead to solid retirement planning decisions, in the order of importance we felt they should have.
Retirement Rocks! Canadian Boomers Invest in Life is written in the hope that our life experiences will provide practical knowledge and inspiration for midlife travellers on the same road. “Invest in Life” is the message we bring. We tell our own and others’ stories to guide, encourage, and inspire you to believe that investing in life requires a clear intention followed by action.
For some, our book is written “back to front”. We deal first with attitudes, role models, and dreams – gosh if not now…when? This next stage may be life’s last chapter! Who inspires you? What is it you want to see, do, taste, smell, and experience before you hit the exit ramp?
Next up is lifestyle – first the health issues. Investing in and making choices that support our health is paramount. Our willingness to be a beginner, accept change, pursue hobbies, find soul satisfying work or volunteering, travel the globe, and choose where we live are all investments in a rich life. What do you value? Where do you choose to invest your time and talents? The focus here is you, you, you – rediscovering your needs, perhaps for the first time in decades.
Who are you sharing this rich life with? Every study on happiness has shown that our social network strongly influences our life satisfaction level. Investing in our connections to others, our relationships – yields enormous returns. Do we have friends to grow old with, a partner we cherish, and family connections that sustain us? Are there investments of time, talent or talk possible that would enrich and grow these important connections?
Last up – the money question. Last in the book, but not because it isn’t important, of course it is important…but. You can’t achieve a clear picture of your money needs until you create the framework and know what’s really important to you. No, not important in the past but in this next life phase. Until we vision our lifestyle of choice and look to our relationships with others, we are unable to answer the question – how much is enough? and we are unable to decide if work will be a part of the equation.
What is money in service to in your life? Studies show that spending money on life experience makes us happier than spending money on more new stuff. In other words, instant gratification isn’t lasting gratification.
Money allows us to entertain friends and family, to travel, to assist grandchildren in their education, to live well and maintain our hobbies and interests. In other words, our money follows our values, not the other way around. If fancy clothes, big houses and new cars are not our priorities, our money does not need to follow those objectives. It is easier to say no to them when we are clear on what we are saying yes to. What are you saying yes to?
We can have anything in our lives but we can’t have everything. We must make choices, not just financially but in our relationships and lifestyle that still lead us to where we want to go – a rich retirement life. You must make choices too.
Yes It’s Still Called Retirement ?
What is this next life stage, this next chapter, this state-of-being we still call retirement ?
A quick glance back – The idea of retirement is of relatively recent origin, introduced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Previously factors such as lower life expectancy and the absence of financial freedom and pension plans saw people working until their death or at least until their state of health no longer made working possible.
This has little basis in reality today. The direct relationship between retirement and work has changed significantly. Now we are able to consider retirement as a life phase that may include work or not. We can choose to experience retirement and continue to work on our terms.
Retirement is our opportunity, and for many of us our last opportunity, to design and to experience the life we imagine, to live life on our terms, to do what we want, when, how, and with whom we choose. Begin your own design process; utilize the exercises included with each chapter to help you.
We are grateful that the act of writing this book has taken us through our own process of growth, change and learning. You can’t write with authenticity about living well in this next life stage unless you make every effort to walk the talk.
The premise and the promise of Retirement Rocks! is that a rich retirement life based on the cornerstones of lifestyle, relationship, and finances is available to every Boomer who invests in their life!
To begin, go to “Life Design and Planning” and complete the Gauging My Lifestyle exercise (page 245); then review the Retirement Checklist (page 275).
Welcome to Retirement Rocks!
Invest in Your Life
To invest in our lives requires having an intention, making choices consistent with our intention, and taking action that supports our choices. Perhaps this quote says it best.
“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”
James Dean
Outlook and Vision
Life Cornerstones
Life List
LIFESTYLE | RELATIONSHIP | FINANCES
Invest in Your Life
Outlook and Vision
To different minds, the same world
is a hell, and a heaven.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Vision is the art of seeing
what is invisible to others.
Jonathan Swift
Outlook and Vision
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
Create your own retirement reality!
Some of you will recall seeing a delighted, enthusiastic, chair bouncing and arm-waving Roberto Benigni called to accept his 1999 Best Actor award for the movie he also wrote and directed, “Life Is Beautiful.”
If you haven’t seen it yet, you really must! The movie is set in Italy in the late 1930s. Jewish poet Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni) uses charm and wit to win the hand of Dora, an Italian schoolteacher. They marry and have a child while around them, war erupts. One fateful day, the Germans arrest Guido and his son and transfer them to a Jewish concentration camp. Dora demands she be taken too.
To protect his son from the grim
reality of their situation, Guido tells Giosué that they are on a
holiday. He turns camp life into an elaborate charade with himself as
the jokester and chief games master, envisioning another, happier,
reality. His childlike antics, love of life and family, and his vivid
imagination create a grand adventure that delights both his son and
the viewer. His persistently positive outlook and his fierce
determination to live only
in the present moment
create a new reality.
We can be the writer, director and lead actor in our own life. We can construct our own reality for our retirement. Our vision, our life outlook, and an ability to live in the present moment combine to give us the retirement life we dream of.
You are about to be released into your next life phase.
Live in the Present
How present are you most of the time? Where does your mind usually try to take you? If you were to stop and notice, would you often find yourself pre-occupied with the past or living in the future?
Ekhart Tolle in his book, “The Power of Now” said, “Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry, and all forms of fear are caused by too much future and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past and not enough presence.”
Stay present in your life!
Develop a Positive Outlook
It isn’t true that older people are miserable, but what is true is that miserable people get old. How would others describe you? Is your life outlook generally optimistic or pessimistic, positive or negative? Is your glass usually half full or half empty? If you are generally optimistic and positive, these powerful traits will serve you well when retiring. If your life outlook doesn’t serve you well, you can take steps to change it.
The power to change our outlook begins with our thoughts or with events and our interpretation of those thoughts or events. Here’s how this might work.
thought or event → interpretation → feeling → reaction
The power to change our feelings and reactions begins with our interpretation of events or willingness to change attitudes. Events and thoughts are always occurring in our life. We can control some events or thoughts, but many we do not control; they just happen. What we can control is how we choose to interpret these events and what we choose to do with some of our thoughts. This interpretation gives rise to our feelings (positive or negative) and then to our reaction to those feelings.
I am reminded of a time when I was stuck in a traffic jam. A truck was ahead of me attempting to make a three-point turn without the space to do so. Traffic was lined up in both directions. It was apparent it would be some time before we would be moving again. The truck driver was hammering his steering wheel and obviously distressed. Every part of his posture showed the state of anger, frustration and anxiety this delay was creating for him. I glanced at the driver behind me. He had opened his sunroof, reclined his seat, and I could hear the sounds of music coming through his window. What a different response to the same event!
Do you ever wonder why others appear to react differently from the way you do when faced with a similar circumstance? The answer is simply that the interpretation they choose is different from yours. You too can choose a different interpretation but you may need to learn or re-learn how to do that. A subtle shift in the nature of the statements you make to yourself and to others will enable learning and change over time. Positive thinking can be habit forming!
When we choose not to be the victim of our habitual responses, we can make change in our life. We can change our physiology because we are all aware of the benefit of slowing our breathing pattern under stress. Laughter, exercise, or even smiling can also change our state. Our other option is to change our thinking. We can do that by imagining ourselves as having other resources, by creating mental visions, or using other triggers such as music. Or we can simply decide to re-frame the experience into something more positive.
Use negative experiences as an opportunity to practise new behaviour. You will establish a healthier pattern of thinking and reacting to life events. There is of course no instant gratification, and it certainly may not always eliminate initial unwanted feelings.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP promotes the idea of imagining you have an internal control panel. Picture the front of your microwave oven or the dashboard of your car. What on/off push buttons and higher/lower adjustments do you need to have on your personal control panel?
For example, the buttons may be anger, tolerance, happiness, frustration, patience, understanding, or anxiety. Pretend to push and move these buttons and levers in and out or up and down to make attitude adjustments as needed. Do you sometimes need to push the pause button or the emergency stop?
Create a Vision
Endings give rise to new beginnings, and closing one door opens another. Only by stepping out of our comfort zone and away from the familiar can we make our life more interesting and fulfilling.
What we envision for our lives strongly influences the outcome. Why is this so? Perhaps it’s because the stronger our vision and belief in its possibility, the stronger our commitment when we arrive at forks in the road and have to make a choice.
When we think about being retired, it can conjure up all kinds of visions and feelings. At one extreme, retirement may feel like a punishment for failure to accomplish everything we set out to accomplish in our career. Like a jail sentence, some believe retirement should be avoided for as long as possible.
At the other extreme, it might feel like a fairy-tale existence, where all we’ve dreamed of will come true. Our years of toil and hard work will finally pay off and life will be nirvana. The sooner, the better!
I got together with a former colleague about two years into my retirement and asked him about his plans for retirement. He answered, “I’ve given it some thought and I’m not ready for the rocking chair yet.” That was his outlook on retirement!
We all know inspiring people who are always determined to make the best of any situation. We also likely know some “awful-izers,” those who are determined to make the worst of it. What is your outlook towards retirement? Are you an optimist? Are you able to take things in stride? Do you have life meaning and purpose? Do you need to re-discover or re-claim who you are or construct who you’d like to be?
A literal definition of “retirement” taken from the dictionary contains descriptions such as removal or withdrawal from service, moving into privacy or seclusion, to retreat or remove oneself. These definitions are far from true and no longer valid.
Our lives are the result of the choices that we make daily along the way. It is within our power to redefine retirement. Retirement is an evolving journey without a destination, but with intention of choosing and experiencing life on our terms.
Choose Your Role Models
Do you know anyone who has retired? What factors have made their retirement successful or unsuccessful? What personal attributes contributed to or hindered their success? How would you choose to be like or unlike this person in approaching your retirement?
Your retirement life phase may well last longer than your working life! In fact, it might be the longest single period of your life. When I made the decision to leave my career life behind I certainly knew what I was retiring from, but did I know what I was retiring to? I viewed retirement as a period of my life when I would decide what I did, and when; as a time when I could make choices and live a life that was crafted for me and by me. Retirement “Life is Beautiful.” I chose a retirement that rocks!
Invest in Your Life
Life Cornerstones
Heaven on Earth is
a choice you must make,
not a place we must find.
Wayne Dyer
Life Cornerstones
This phase of life offers you the possibility to experience life on your terms. The Boomer generation is not prepared to sit back and be satisfied living the retirement life of previous generations – we want a very different life experience. The word retirement needs to be retired!
It is within our grasp to experience meaning and fulfillment, to be true to ourselves and to renew, regenerate and reinvent ourselves through work, leisure, and learning.
Retirement – the life phase you are about to embark on can be fulfilling and packed with new and gratifying experiences. Through healthy life investment choices, you can create just that kind of a retirement life.
Retirement Rocks! holds another meaning for us courtesy of Stephen Covey, one of our favourite authors. In his book “First Things First,” he describes a story that one of his associates heard at a seminar. The presenter pulled out a wide-mouthed jar and placed it on the table next to some fist-sized rocks.
After filling the jar with rocks he asked, “Is the jar full?” People could see that no more rocks would fit, so they replied, “Yes!” “Not so fast,” he cautioned. He then got some gravel and added it to the jar, filling the spaces between the rocks. Again, he asked, “Is the jar full?” This time the students replied, “Maybe not.”
The presenter reached for a bucket of sand and dumped it in the jar, filling the spaces between the rocks and the gravel. Once again, he asked, “Is the jar full?” “No!” the students shouted.
Finally, he grabbed a pitcher of water and filled the jar completely, then asked his audience what they had learned. One of the participants answered, “If you try, you can always fit more into your life.” Isn’t that what we often try to do – fit even more into a too full life? “No,” said the presenter. “The point is, if you don’t focus on the big rocks or your key priorities first, you may fill the jar with gravel or pebbles or sand – something less important – and you’ll have no room for the big rocks.”
What are your BIG ROCKS?
Each of us needs to redefine our own big rocks or important life cornerstones for this next phase of life. You might for example, believe them to be, your work, relationships, health and well-being, personal activities, and spirituality. And what about money?
Foundation stones, even bigger but less visible rocks, are positive outlook, and life meaning and purpose. We discuss these further and in more depth in the Lifestyle section.
Work / Job / Career
We spend much of our life creating and contributing through our work. Using our skill, knowledge and experience in our work satisfies a basic internal drive or need. This drive or need does not go away because we decide to retire.
If we enjoy and gain satisfaction from our work, there is no need to choose a retirement life that does not include work. Perhaps we will choose to work more sustainably or for an organization that fits our values. Perhaps our work role will be unpaid work for an organization close to our heart. “If we love what we do, we never have to work again!”
Dissatisfaction in retirement has been shown to be especially true for those who were defined by their work or overly dependent on their workplace title and status. Defining or identifying oneself strictly on the basis of “do” and neglecting the “who” puts us at greater risk.
Is there more work you want to do in retirement? What are the characteristics of the work? What is your intention, motivation, and need?
Relationships – Significant, Family, Friends, and Community
We interact with others on many different levels on a daily basis and in all areas of our lives. Our relationships are, without question, a cornerstone or big rock in our lives, and they contribute to our quality of life. We call upon close relationships for support and strength during challenging times.
The basic human needs are to share, to be seen, heard, and validated by others, to experience and to feel, to support and to help others and to be supported and helped by them in turn. Neither our laughter nor our tears are as nurturing or as healing when experienced alone as when experienced with someone who is close to us.
Do you have close friends, friends whom you value and cherish, friends that are accepting and supportive of you, friends to grow old with? Do you make a conscious effort to keep in regular touch with friends, to see them and talk to them, know what’s going on in their lives for better and for worse? Are you able to spend quality time with your family, immediate and extended? Are all of your family relationships healthy and up-to-date? Is your major love relationship your most important and nurturing relationship? If not, why not? What will it take to change that? Relationship is a renewable resource that requires regular investment!
Health and Well-being
Studies have shown that the risk factors affecting our health are about 30% genetic and 70% lifestyle. Lifestyle choices affect health.
Having health-related goals and taking action to achieve them is critical. If you have good health now, what must you do to maintain it? Will extending your good health require regular planning and action? Can you expect age-related health issues to surface? Good health is essential for you to function well in all areas of your life.
Personal Activities
Have you ever had the experience of asking someone, “So, how are you doing?” to have him answer, “Oh, I’m keeping busy.” That’s good, but is that what we are looking forward to – keeping busy? There is a big difference between activities that fill personal time and those that are personally fulfilling.
What are you doing when time disappears? What do you have a passion for? If there are no obvious answers to these questions, ask a different question. Ask from a different perspective in your life, likely when you were much younger and had more freedom. Our interests can get lost or shelved for a time as we become focused and consumed by other things. As we approach retirement, those other things may no longer require the same focus and attention, so it’s a perfect opportunity for renewal.
What new activities have caught your eye? Give them a try. If one activity doesn’t cut it, move on to the next one. Try a variety of activities – intellectual, physical, social, creative, and solo and group activities. What are you waiting for? What is stopping you?
Spirituality
Our spiritual life is personal. We can choose to add a spiritual or religious dimension to our lives in a variety of ways such as prayer, meditation, yoga, gratitude journals, or an organized religious community. Some already acknowledge the value of a spiritual practice. For others, retirement or another life transition may provide a doorway to exploration.
What about Money?
A high percentage of pre-retirees assume that money is the most important factor of a successful retirement. We will simply define “successful” to mean that one is living the life he or she wants and is therefore happy. In other words, he or she could honestly say, “I like my life.”
When you talk to people already living in retirement, most place the money factor further down the scale of importance. Preceding money are health, relationships, and meaningful activities.
No one would argue that financial comfort in retirement and the ability to afford a preferred lifestyle are of fundamental importance to “success.” However, the source of most of the difficulties and challenges retirees face are not from the financial side of things.
Conclusion
Perhaps a big rocks metaphor appeals to you and gives you a useful framework for making choices in your next life phase, or perhaps you view your life as a puzzle. When we work with a puzzle picture, we usually identify the most obvious features and begin by placing those pieces together. Having done that, all the other pieces fall more easily into place.
Puzzles, rocks or cornerstones – what are the most important aspects of your life? Are you satisfied with how they align and fit together?
Invest in Your Life
Create a Life List
Happiness is not a goal,
it is a bi-product.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Create a Life List
Happiness
is a by-product of a well-lived life. What do you want?
What do you yearn for? What have you hoped all your life to see or
try? If you have been a spouse, a parent, an only child, you surely
have life experience putting the needs of others well ahead of your
own. Have you come to a place where you feel it’s your
turn
now?
Well, what is it that you want to do, to see, to taste or smell, to try, or otherwise experience before you hit life’s exit ramp? What countries do you dream of travelling to? What new hobbies or physical activities would you like to try, even just once? These are wishes more than measures, the longings of your heart, and the visions in your mind’s eye. What do you dream of?
There was a movie released in 2008 called "The Bucket List." The premise of the movie has Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman (both in their late 60s or early 70s) told they suffer a terminal illness and together they create a list of places to see and things to experience before they pass away.
What would your list include – seeing the Mona Lisa, smelling fields of lavender or fresh cut hay, tasting truffles or caviar, feeling the body rush of crossing the finish line after a marathon?
One of the “Life Lists” that I've been exposed to is by John Goddard (Google his name for inspiration). His life list was started when he was 15 and some of his goals reflect that youthful perspective. He wanted to become an Eagle Scout, ride a horse in the Rose Parade and photograph Niagara Falls. He wanted to swim in Lake Tanganyika, and learn jujitsu and how to fence, and to teach a college course.
If offered the opportunity, what would you say yes to? Danny Wallace wrote an autobiographical book called “The Yes Man,” which inspired a movie of the same name. One day a stranger on a bus advised Danny to “say yes more.” He didn’t much like where he was in his life so he decided to see where life would take him if he simply said yes to every opportunity that came his way.
Predictably, he said yes to things he wished he hadn’t but he also said yes to things that took his life in new and rich directions. What are you ready to say yes to in your life now?
My stepdaughter resisted trying new foods. We asked her to consider saying yes to just one new food a year. She was delighted to report that she is years ahead of schedule!
I’ve said yes to hiking the Grand Canyon, climbing Kilimanjaro, early retirement and learning to play a musical instrument and I hope to say yes to much more.
I’m grateful for the influence of my parents. My mother, a Depression-era Scot, had a cautious fiscal influence that was counterbalanced by the risk-taking entrepreneurship of my father.
My father was a believer that financial risks in pursuit of a life dream were not only acceptable but mandatory. One of his life-list dreams was to start a new ski area in Western Canada. He followed that commitment of his heart but ultimately it did not succeed.
As a family, we teased him that he left his shirt and our inheritance on that hill. Of course, he didn’t but I asked him years later if he regretted the loss of the money. He told me, “How could I regret the loss when I had the opportunity to pursue a dream? How many men ever get that opportunity?”
I loved my father and respected and valued his teaching that finances or money are a tool designed to operate in service to one’s life, and one’s life was never meant to be in service to money. My father had a life list in his mind, and he was a good role model for me. When he passed away, he still had many things on his list he had yet to try but he wanted it that way and felt “there's always been something for me to reach for.”
What are you reaching for? If you knew that you had only a short time left on the planet – and frankly, that’s all of us – what would you dare to try? Challenge yourself to list 100 items. Don’t be intimidated by the challenge. The items on your life list needn’t be life changing, unless of course you want them to be.
That may seem a tall order and you’ll wonder how to begin. Think in terms of the alphabet. What do you want to try or experience that begins with A – visiting Africa or studying art history? F – more time for family, fishing, or flower arranging? T – travel, textiles, Thailand, theatre? Engage each of your senses.
It’s through our senses that all pleasure comes. Keep going – it’s the key to a rich and juicy life.
Lifestyle
Our lifestyle is the accumulations of choices we make that define how we live. Aligning our choices with who we are, and with our innermost values, leads to a life that Rocks!
Meaning and Purpose
Life Transitions
Health Comes First
More Work or Volunteering
Activities and Hobbies
Travel
Housing
LIFESTYLE | RELATIONSHIP | FINANCES
Lifestyle
Meaning and Purpose
The least of things with meaning is worth
more than the greatest of things without it.
Carl Jung
Meaning and Purpose
It seems that we live in a time when there is never enough time. We live in a time when information and knowledge abound yet meaningful communication and authentic human connection are lacking. Technology and other means exist to ease our work and our lives yet we are unable (or unwilling?) to be still. Far too often, we are determined to follow the storms, chasing waves with white caps, avoiding clear skies and the reflective mirror of calm water. Far too often we are in a hurry and don’t know why. We are busy spending our precious time on what is unimportant while allowing what is most important to fall by the wayside.
We have become obsessed with mastering minor things. In the end, we find ourselves enslaved to this pursuit, interpreting the world and our lives as frenzied. In a sense, we have lost our bearings, frequently feeling unhappy and harbouring an emptiness that I suggest is born from an absence of meaning and purpose in our life.
What do you long for? What are you drawn to that you are passionate about? What is it that you are excited to do or to experience? Where or what is the source of enthusiasm for you? What kindles the fire in your belly, awakens your inner energy and feeds your self-worth? What are you interested in and looking forward to every day? What gets you out of bed in the morning feeling pumped and ready to go?
In your responses to these questions lies the answer to the question about meaning and purpose in your life. Do you have life meaning and purpose, and where or in what does it reside? A day in a life without meaning and purpose is like a flower that never blooms. It is more akin to existence than to living, surviving rather than thriving.
A Sixth Sense
The meaning of life is best understood as a concept or as a sense rather than as something tangible. Instead of attempting to explain, thereby implying there is a need to convince someone that meaning is important, let’s examine it from a philosophical perspective.
Here are a few insightful and inspiring quotes about the meaning of life from some wise and famous people.
Victor Frankl
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”
Helen Keller
“Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
Hannah Senesh
“One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world.”
Henry Thoreau
“I have learned that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Stephen Covey
“Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power.”
Robert Byrne
“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.”
If our primary life meaning and purpose is defined by our careers and our workplace, it is not at all unusual to be unsure and unclear as to what comes next. However, extended uncertainty or a continued absence of meaning and purpose in retirement is a narrow and bumpy road to be on. In this situation, exploration is a worthwhile practical approach to take. Rather than living with a lack of meaning and purpose, experiment with some new ideas by trying them out.
Expectations and Beliefs
You will be much more likely to enjoy exploring new ideas if you are not attached to the outcome. Expectations are a good thing when they are motivating. However, high or unrealistic expectations may not serve you well and in the end can be deflating. Success is achieved in the attempt alone, not in the result. You know the old adage: “It is better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all.”
Our beliefs influence what we are willing (or unwilling) to try. They are the principles that govern our choices and actions. Our true beliefs are the ones when we do what we say we will. When we believe in something, we look for evidence that confirms the belief and we ignore or reject evidence to the contrary. Over time, this causes us to see that belief as a fact instead of what it actually is – our belief at a point in time or in a certain situation. Sometimes we will choose to believe something despite the existence of opposing facts.
What you believe is not possible is indeed impossible.
What you imagine is possible, has a real chance.
Lifestyle
Life Transitions
It is not the strongest one that survives,
but the one most responsive to change.
Charles Darwin
Life Transitions
The paradoxical thing about transitions is that they begin with endings and end with new beginnings. The time in between can be very discomforting but we need to view it as the incubation period for an exciting rebirth.
I hope I never lose my ability to remember being a small child and feeling excitement and anticipation about the future. I recall my daydreams of having a motorcycle, driving a car, playing sports with the big boys, learning to catch fish, and on and on. I couldn’t wait to shave, believe it or not!
Somewhere along the line, especially when life kicks us hard, it is easy to leave our passion for new experiences by the wayside. It remains our responsibility, as it was back then, to be aware of that happening and to do whatever it takes to pick up our life again. Without those feelings, without that desire, life becomes too humdrum and we can find ourselves just going through the motions. As we move from one life phase to the next, from childhood to adolescence, to adulthood, from life as a student to building a career, and for some, on to getting married and raising children, we must, consciously or not, make major changes and shifts in attitude.
The Process of Change
We generally react to change in our lives in one of three ways. We get engaged and make change happen for us, we sit idly by and watch change happen to us, or we wake up after the change and say to ourselves, “What the heck happened?” If we are under the impression that entering the retirement life phase will be a quick and easy transition without much change, we’d best re-assess that impression or we may be in for a few surprises.
Any major life change brings with it a transition process. This process has a beginning and an end. Imagine it as a bridge that you need to cross. The bridge has a starting point, an ending point, and some areas of interest along its span. We cannot successfully get from the starting point to the ending point without spending time at each area of interest. How long is the bridge, so we know how long it takes to cross? Typically, we are looking at least at the first year of retirement as a reasonable transition timeframe. There is a risk of stopping permanently along the way because for some reason we cannot or will not move forward.
This transition is mostly a feeling process rather than a thinking process. We are all quite familiar with thinking processes because we deal with those almost every day. The feeling process related to change is something most of us have experienced in the work place, likely more than once. They include mergers and acquisitions, the introduction of major new accounting or human resource systems, new ways to do things, new technology, reorganizations, or a new boss. Sure, a lot of thinking goes on in order to deal with these changes but if we are honest with ourselves, there is a lot of feeling going on as well. The aspects of the feeling process are more or less the same, no matter what the change or when it occurs. The difference, however, is that the feeling process for a major life change such as retirement is so much more personal that each aspect of the process can be more obvious and have a greater effect on us.
The main aspects of the transition process and the areas of interest along the bridge are:
► Endings and unavoidable losses
– bringing feelings of denial, anger, and sadness
► Possibilities and new beginnings
– bringing feelings of uncertainty and confusion
► Moving on
– bringing feelings of acceptance and letting go