Change is the Only Constant

After a big transition myself, a move to Florida with a plan to focus on retirement coaching in my new digs, I've changed my mind. I talked to hundreds of people here--and throughout the country--who no longer are all about planning a vibrant retirement lifestyle. We've experienced a remarkable change in the economic environment, and we're all touched by it. By choice or not by choice, men and women who might have been contemplating an active retirement in a few years, are now contemplating opening a business, or entering a new field altogether. We're all in this boat which seems to be whipping around in rough waters.

So this blog is going on sabbatical. I've returned to coaching small business owners, something I've done with great pleasure for twenty years.

Please visit my website, www.coachingconbrio.com, and keep in touch.

The Rebalancing Act

Retirement Coaches are always looking for a better word to describe life after a primary career. The word "retirement" projects a slide show of negative images--let your imagination fill in the screen. People use the phrase "the new retirement" or "rewiring". I don't think we've come up with the right language yet to describe what we're doing after we move out of traditional full-time employment. I'm right in the middle of it myself, and the best I can think of so far to describe my "new" life is rebalancing. I planned a phased retirement, and am now in the second phase. On May 31, 2008 I closed my psychotherapy practice to focus entirely on coaching--primarily my Retirement Con Brio business. I moved out of the office I leased and am working out of my home, seeing some coaching clients at their offices or homes--or Starbucks. I still do a lot of phone coaching. I'm in the coaching game about twenty hours per week--instead of my usual 40-hour work week. So I'm living the experience I talk about with clients. What I notice so far is that my days are divided up differently, and I spend more time at the health club, more time writing and more time relaxing with friends, and more time reflecting/ The re-shuffling of how I spend my time seems comfortable and energizing so far! I'll keep you posted as I move through this transition. I'd love to hear about your own journey.

A Group of Rock Stars--Average Age 80

A good friend emailed me last week and recommended that I see the film "Young at Heart" which was showing in our city. So glad I did. A couple of hours spent with the two dozen members of the Young@Heart Chorus made time stood still. I laughed, I cried and throughout the documentary film I applauded these "seasoned" singers, their enthusiasm and love--and their productions, the end result of weeks of arduous rehearsals. The group has members between the ages of 70 and 97. They sing rock and do they ever rock on stage. The group started about 25 years ago, and under the guidance of a cool 55-year-old director, has been entertaining audiences all over this country, on several television shows and world tours. You can learn more about these wise retirees at YoungAtHeartChorus.net. They sing Con Brio!

Seniors Ahead in Happiness

Follow this link to an article by Yang Yang, a University of Chicago sociologist. http://www2.asanet.org/journals/asr/. His title is "Social Inequalities in Happiness in the United States", and ta-da, his studies suggest good news for those of us entering Act III of life. Especially those of us who prefer happiness over misery. (I think we all do in our depths. Some people have been so whiplashed by disappointment that they wrap themselves in pessimism and cynicism which of course doesn't make them feel emotionally safer anyway. And...they get few invitations to dinner parties.) Yang reports that Americans are happier in their "senior" years than at other stages of life. He attributes this, in part, to close social relationships that nurture well-being. When I talk to clients about longevity, I often hear "But I don't WANT to live to 100," (or 110, whatever the actuaries are predicting). My inkling is our minds automatically illustrate the idea of living past 90, and the picture is grim, undignified and helpless. Truth is, people who make it to 100 usually are still independent, active and lucid and have little likelihood of dying from a protracted yucky disease. And...only about 4 percent of older Americans live in nursing homes. This good news I found in a book by Bob Gleeson, M.D., "What Healthy People Know". So it's time to edit those old movies in our brains. And of course, we don't have to wait until we're in our seventies to begin living a happier and more fulfilling life. Might start practicing now, even if you just turned 40, or 21.

From a Dream to a Plan

Daily we're bombarded with data about boomers and retirement. In the US more than 10,000 people retire every day. We know longevity increased by thirty years in the twentieth century. The number of Americans aged 65 and older will double more than three times between now and 2030. Retirees can expect to live thirty or forty years in to the next chapter of life. Most haven't designed a plan for that big chunk of time--even though the research indicates that having a plan greatly boosts the chance of a successful retirement. Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners, in "Don't Retire, REWIRE", provide these practical tips for a fulfilling retirement: Have a plan. Plan to evolve. Test market (eg. If you think you'd like to retire in Arizona, go rent a place for a couple months). Discard parts of your plan that don't work. Make it your plan--don't look for approval from others. Freedom is a good thing--if you don't have too much or too little. I trained with Dr. Richard P. Johnson when I was earning certification as a Retirement Coach. I like this quote from Dr. Johnson: "Age is not a thief in the night. Age is the master teacher."

A Serious Look at Play

One of my pet leisure activities is golf. Golf nut that I am, I know that the game is not to be a central focus in my retirement plan. If I tried to design my life around golf, it would no longer be a diversion and thus no longer leisure. You may know retired people who didn't design a blueprint for the "third act" and assumed they would just fish all they want, play golf every day, or center life around whatever they found on television. Soon they start looking for diversion from those activities. As a break from our routines though, leisure is essential. It can be a means of personal growth and fulfill critical needs. Leisure activities are best cultivated during our work years when they can keep us fresh and productive. In retirement, leisure will play a larger role. Without play of some sort (social interaction, spectator activities, creative expression, mental stimulation. physical exercise or solitary relaxation) our lives soon lack luster, says Dr. Richard Johnson in "Creating a Successful Retirement", one of his many excellent guides to the new retirement. Check out your own attitude toward play and your preferred leisure activities. They may well be the fountain of youth.

Something Urgent and Powerful

The Best in Art and Life

The best in art and life
comes from a center
something urgent and powerful
an ideal or emotion
that insists
on its being.

From that insistence
a shape emerges
and creates its structure

If you begin with a structure,
you have to make up the passion,

and that's very hard to do.
(Prose by Roger Rosenblatt redone as a poem by Margaret Wheatley)

I'm convinced each of us has inside a burning desire. The pilot light may be so low, so neglected over our hard-hitting work years, that we aren't even aware it is there. Or we may dismiss it as a silly dream of youth. At the outset of retirement coaching, we use online assessments and deep conversations to uncover that dream. We tug on the dream to reveal the elements that give powerful meaning to your life. Then begin designing a vibrant retirement life that is built around that meaning, that fire that "juices" you and makes you feel fully alive. Why not?