A Proactive Key to Prepare for Retirement

March 17, 2015 by

Key to RetirementIn my coaching practice and with the assessments I give, there is an influencing factor that helps clients succeed in their retirement planning and that is the idea of replacement. Think about it, work is much more than a paycheck for most of us. In addition to financial stability, work offers many other rewards like a natural cadence or rhythm to our day, a sense of utility, socialization and, of course, identity.

Once we begin to think about our life beyond work, there is the realization that to meaningfully fill all those hours, it takes some thoughtful analysis related to how we imagine ourselves and what is realistic to achieve our renewed version of “The Good Life”. It doesn’t happen on its own and it certainly isn’t one-size fits all. To get it right for you, it takes some personal reflection, conversations with your significant other or those in your life you trust to be sounding boards, as well as some practice to see if expectations are in line with reality.

I will give you an example. The other day I was going over the Retirement Success Profile with a client in his late 60’s. Once he took this assessment and saw his results he got to work figuring out how many free hours each day he would now have to pursue his interests, hobbies and volunteer work. He calculated 56 hours to parlay into each week and looked at how much time he would ideally like to spend on each activity. We laughed when I asked him where his wife fit into all of this, since he mentioned family as one category and gave it only 8 hours! The point is, he thought about replacements and calculated his numbers and this is his start. With two more years before he fully retires, this first draft schedule will no doubt be modified, but he is on his way to figuring out how to find purpose and meaning during retirement. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Life Transitions Tagged With: , , , , , ,

“50 is the new 40”

October 13, 2014 by

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“Aging is not lost youth, but a stage of opportunity and strength” ~Betty Friedan

A few months ago I blogged about my views around the idea of “50 being the new 40” and how it bothered me that we, as a culture, were perpetuating this myth, disowning parts of our actual age and the natural benefits we draw from our years of life experience. I still stand behind this viewpoint, but after reading a section from “Passages”, originally published in 1976 by Gail Sheehy, I have a new appreciation for how the idea of pushing back the clock in the last few decades has some merit.

Read along to Sheehy’s words with me and see what you think: “The ‘I should’ of the twenties, which gives way to the “I want” of the thirties, becomes the “I must” of the forties.”  The author ends there, defining the decades, not even giving mention to the 50’s, other than by omission. Interesting exclusion to consider, as culturally in the 1970’s, people in their 50’s may have seemed oldish and well beyond the urgency of the “I musts” reaped from their 40’s. As I read this passage it seemed anachronistic and very much out of step with the way I perceive the battle cry of each decade. [Read more…]

Filed Under: 50 is the new 40, Life Chapters Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Well Being 101

August 20, 2014 by

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“Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  ~Howard Thurman

Flourish is a book by Martin Seligman, known for his extensive research in the field of positive psychology. Within the book I found many takeaways including the acronym PERMA, which is a very helpful tool to build awareness around what encompasses well-being, or flourishing. Basically PERMA stands for Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment. It also happens to be shorthand for personal mastery, which is a happy coincidence since the idea around mastering yourself personally is at the heart of my coaching practice.

The word flourish, as defined by the author, explores what makes life worth living and builds on the conditions that make it so. Things like happiness, flow, meaning, love, gratitude, achievement, growth, better relationships—these all become foundational content related to well being.

The ideal way to create these conditions is through deepening your awareness and deploying your highest strengths, values and pleasures to meet the world with the gusto and flow needed to be mindful your PERMA. In other words, it’s not just one thing that creates well-being, it’s a series of ongoing and consistent patterns, a construct, that enables us to grow and learn our way into a life of flourishing. The book builds a framework to create a roadmap of self-discovery. If applied, your knowledge of well-being will give you the tools needed to break your “flourish code” and open the floodgate to more of what makes your life worth living more vitally and with greater purpose and meaning. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Fourishing, Well being Tagged With: , , , , ,