This book shows elderly workers how to reinvent themselves and achieve the kind of fulfillment and meaning in their lives they have always dreamed of.
Life after work no longer conjures up images of couples wandering the malls, playing golf, and taking endless Caribbean cruises. As baby boomers reach their 50s and 60s, they are redefining what it means to retire. Many of them are still choosing to work or create a whole new life entirely. What they crave is vitality, joy, and meaning in their lives.
In The Joy of Retirement, readers can start crafting their future and discovering their passions with advice on topics such as:
finding new interests that make the most of their unique talents
planning their lifestyle at 50+
assessing what transitions they are ready and willing to make
defining priorities and goals
establishing their criteria for success
mastering the seven steps to maintaining vitality
Revealing and hopeful, The Joy of Retirement will reshape how people look at the next phase of their lives.
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Yes, you can access The Joy of Retirement by David C. BORCHARD, Patricia A. DONOHOE in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Personal Development & Personal Finance. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
“I knew who I was during my career in this organization, but I have no idea of who I’m going to be when I leave here.”
—A 55-YEAR-OLD MALE EXECUTIVE PREPARING FOR RETIREMENT
“I’ve worked hard for the past 27 years doing the company’s work, and now I am desperate to discover what I really want to do in the next chapter of my life.”
—A 53-YEAR-OLD FEMALE PROFESSIONAL PREPARING FOR RETIREMENT
“Retirement for me has been the gateway to freedom.”
—A 65-YEAR-OLD RECENTLY RETIRED EXECUTIVE
Rejuvenation
If you’re in the fifty-plus years, retirement no doubt has been on your mind, unless you’ve already made the transition to life beyond full-time employment. As I write this, I am 70 years old—chronologically, that is. I’d put my functional age at fifty-something, and I dislike the word retirement.
Have you ever checked out the definition of retirement? My dictionary defines it as “to withdraw oneself from business, active service or public life; to disappear, to take out of circulation; withdrawn or secluded; difficult to be seen, known, or discovered.” With that definition, why would anyone ever want to be retired?
I don’t want or intend to work full-time for any one organization ever again. But I do want more balance and diversity in my life than was possible when I was fully employed. That sentiment is one I often hear echoed from the hundreds of retirement-bound clients I have worked with over the years. How about you? Where do you stand on the question of how you want to be spending your time in the next chapter of your life?
As a freelance professional counselor and career management coach, I work with individuals transitioning to pension-supported lifestyles. The great majority of these folks are far more interested in life and work change than traditional retirement. My clients seldom mention the topic of retirement. Instead, they think about how to rejuvenate their lives by recreating, reinventing or redesigning the way they live. Retirement has a passive connotation. It sounds like something that happens to you because you have gotten old—through no particular fault of your own. Life recreation, by contrast, suggests a self-initiated action—one that originates from free will and intentionality rather than from an imposed condition. Maybe it’s time to retire the word retirement in favor of a more positive term. I invite you to coin a new term for your exciting new chapter in life!
Exciting? Yes! But not without some work. The big challenge facing most of us in our fifty-plus years is how to recreate a fulfilling and meaningful life appropriate to who we are now, taking advantage of the life, work, and learning possibilities now available. There are at least three compelling reasons to pay attention to your new challenge:
1. At this life juncture, you may now have the opportunity for greater freedom by way of a pension-supported lifestyle.
2. Never before have you been this old, which also means you have less time remaining in this earthbound experience. This sobering reality makes the time we do have a valuable commodity, a potentially rich but limited resource.
3. At this point in our lives, we have more life-enriched experience, along with deeper self-knowledge from which to make more fulfilling life choices than we did in our younger years. This hard-won wisdom provides a reference from which to discern what is going to make us richer or poorer in body, mind, and spirit.
The process of life reinventing often begins around fifty-plus, when we find ourselves mulling over questions about life meaning, personal identity, and our core values. Here are some of the kinds of questions that typically arise in this self-questioning process (check any of these that resonate with you):
What will I do when I am no longer committed to the structure of full-time work?
Who am I now, and who am I becoming?
What is it time to leave behind?
What do I call myself when I no longer have a job title or organizational affiliation?
What do I care deeply about?
Where would I/we want to live if I/we could live anywhere?
How much time do I have remaining in this lifetime?
Why am I here?
Will I become an old couch potato when I don’t have to go to work?
How will I know if I’m being successful when I am no longer being evaluated by my performance at work?
Are my best days behind me?
So, what’s next?
We shall address these issues in depth in later chapters. For now, let’s just acknowledge the reality of our aging selves. At fifty-plus, we have entered the ranks of what traditionally has been thought of as elderhood or seniordom. As we enter a new life era, it’s time to let go of that which no longer serves us well or that which we can no longer sustain for some reason. This includes youthful vigor, self-esteem based on career success, or beauty based on unlined faces. At fifty-plus, it’s time to fit into the skin of fully matured adulthood and create new reasons for being and thinking about ourselves. It also may be time to develop underutilized talents and interests, and possibly even engage in some new kinds of work, paid or unpaid.
Change, Rejuvenate, or Hang On
Are you in a quandary of whether the time has come for a change in life, a change in yourself, or an unchanging hold on what you have? You may not want to jump prematurely into an uncertain path, but you also may not want to stay stuck in a current rut simply because you fear change. If you have reached a plateau in your current situation and are running on the low side of motivation, you are probably facing the choice of whether to get rejuvenated through a big life-changing leap or to undertake a few small adjustments here and there. Big life leaps might include choices such as retiring from work, getting a divorce, taking on an entrepreneurial venture, moving to a totally new culture, or undertaking a major career shift. Smaller, life-rejuvenating adjustments might include engaging in some new interests like joining a meditation group, volunteering as a Big Brother or Sister, leading a Boy or Girl Scout troop, joining a church choir, initiating a new project at work, starting a new assignment within your organization, or enrolling in courses of personal interest at the local community college.
Of course, no one ever knows for sure what outcome will result from a decision to go forward with a major life change, and only you can determine whether you are prepared to take that leap. The following Life Vitality Assessment can help you determine whether the time has come to undertake a major transition, to make some small alterations in your life, or to remain a while longer in your current situation.
Life Vitality Assessment
Use the following rating scale to assess your current attitude in response to each of the 20 statements below. Record the number that best describes your response to each statement in the left-hand spaces. When you have recorded your response to all 20 items, tally the sum of all responses in the box provided.
______
1. I would be completely content if my life were to continue pretty much as is over the next 10 years or more.
______
2. I have a rewarding work life and enjoyable leisure activities.
______
3. I would continue with my work and life exactly as it is even if I suddenly came into great wealth.
______
4. I continue to have as much or more energy and enthusiasm for my work and/or life situation as I have always had.
______
5. I never experience boredom or self-doubts about what I’m doing in my daily activities.
______
6. I feel personally empowered and am a creative force in continuing to make my life and work rich and rewarding.
______
7. I seem to be running on a full tank of energy and vitality pretty much all the time.
______
8. I am definitely not ready for retirement because there is much I still want to do professionally.
______
9. My love life is at least as full, rich, and rewarding now and for the foreseeable future as it has ever been.
______
10. I have a clear sense of what my core values are and believe they are fully congruent with my current life situation.
______
11. If I lost my work situation tomorrow for any reason, I am confident I could move onto an excellent new situation in short order.
______
12. I feel great about who I am and am taking excellent care of myself physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.
______
13. I find my current life situation highly challenging and feel good about what I’m learning and how I’m growing.
______
14. Those individuals who know me beyond casual acquaintance hold me in high esteem.
______
15. I am optimistic that I can continue on pretty much as I am now and for the foreseeable future.
______
16. I have a great family life and enjoy rich relationships with good friends and associates.
______
17. I am happy where I/we live and have hobbies and interests outside of work that enrich my life.
______
18. I am clear about my criteria for personal success and am on the right track with my life and work.
______
19. I believe that my current life and/or work situation enables me to contribute and develop my full potential.
______
20. My current life and work situation fully uses my best talents and top interests.
Record your total score from all 20 responses: ______
Interpreting Your Assessment Results
Old Stereotypes and New Perspectives on Life as a Senior
At the onset of the twentieth century, if you achieved the age of 50, you were old. A hundred years ago, the life expectancy was fifty-something. But that was then. Today, it’s a different story. In his book The Power Years, Ken Dychtwald reports, “If you’ve already made it to fifty, you can expect to live at least until your mid-eighties, and thanks to impending scientific breakthroughs, these numbers will keep increasing.”1 That means that, if you transition from full-time work in your fifties or sixties, you still have about a quarter of a century remaining to hang around. Not only that, but there is a strong statistical probability that your coming years are going to be lived in good health and financial well-being. What are you going to do with that much time, and with the options and resources available for enjoying these years?
How rich and fulfilling your remaining years are going to be has a lot to do with your mental outlook at this stage of life. In her book Don’t Stop the Career Clock, Helen Harkness, a psychologist in her seventy-plus years, illuminates the difference between chronological and functional age. Chronological age is what the calendar records, while functional age is a more accurate measure of how old you are based on your physical health, your emotional state of mind, and your creative spirit.2
We grow old, Dr. Harkness observes, by buying into the prevailing negative social and cultural expectations about chronological age. One can easily buy into these expectations with the result that we are programmed to begin declining in our fifties and then accelerate the downward trend in our sixties and seventies. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Who says that declining functionality is inevitable in the fifty-plus years? That may have been true for retirement in the Industrial Era. Back then, most people tended to be used-up physically when they retired at age 65, and they subsequently contributed to the stability of the Social Security system by dying soon after. But that is history. In the twenty-first century, we take better care of ourselves, have improved health care, are living longer, and think differently about the post-fifty years. We remain vibrant by being active in mind, body, and purpose.
Assessing Your True Age
How old are you chronologically? ———
How old do you feel yourself to be functionally? ———
(Be honest here. How old do you actually consider yourself to be, rather than what the calendar says, or you hope, or perhaps pretend, to be? Use your gut level instincts to see what age comes to mind rather than attempting to figure it out rationally. Some things to take into consideration include your energy level, optimism about your future, curiosity about life and your physical strength and agility.)
There is an alternative to buying into the negative stereotypes about life as a senior. On the one hand, if you buy into...
Table of contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Reinventing Your Life At Fifty-Plus
Chapter 2: Life Transitions: Endings and Beginnings
Chapter 3: Imagination and the Next Season of Your Life
Chapter 4: The Life Themes Profiler: Developing Themes for a New Life
Chapter 5: Self-Liberation: Transcending Old Roles
Chapter 6: Establishing Your Criteria for Fulfillment
Chapter 7: Connecting Your Talents to Interests
Chapter 8: Relating and Behaving Differently As a Senior
Chapter 9: Coming Home: Relocating to the Good Life
Chapter 10: Sustaining Vitality: Managing Your Changing Self In a Changing World
