Let’s Help Prepare you for YOUR Retirement:
No two retirements look the same - yours won't either. Below, you'll find a selection of articles written to help you put words to something you might not have realised needed articulating. Sometimes the hardest part isn't finding the answer; it's not knowing there was a question worth asking in the first place.
If you'd like a feel for how I think about retirement - or a sense of what working together might actually be like before you commit to a call - start with the blog. It's the closest thing to sitting in on a conversation with me.
Predicting your future
I found this fascinating piece on the internet: let’s believe that it’s true for the moment.
There was a work of fiction called The Wreck of the Titan published in 1898. The author was an American called Morgan Robertson. The Titan was a large ocean liner.
The fate of the Titan was similar to that of the famous Titanic (which sank 14 years later) in many many ways, such as:
· There were not enough lifeboats;
· It sank in the North Atlantic;
· It fatally hit an iceberg during the month of April, at night;
· It had been described as unsinkable.
Let’s settle on calling this a coincidence, but also one based on Robertson’s understanding of the realities of ship travel at the time. What has it to do with retirement? Please stay with me as I develop my analogy, but this time as a story with a happy ending.
I will pose it as a question: are you able to “write the book” of your retirement and feel that you will pretty much predict a good outcome for yourself? In other words by thinking about the opportunities and risks that may/will present themselves postwork, can you figure out your own solution to what comes next in your life?
If so, this will be the opposite of a shipwreck!
More precisely, knowing more about your personal meaning in life postwork will assist you to move confidently to this next phase. A coach can help with this.
Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.
What does a famous writer do when he retires?
Here are two excerpts from an interview with Philip Roth.
Interviewer: Now that you’ve retired as a novelist, do you ever miss writing, or think about un-retiring?
Philip Roth: No, I don’t. That’s because the conditions that prompted me to stop writing fiction seven years ago haven’t changed. As I say in “Why Write?,” by 2010 I had “a strong suspicion that I’d done my best work and anything more would be inferior. I was by this time no longer in possession of the mental vitality or the verbal energy or the physical fitness needed to mount and sustain a large creative attack of any duration on a complex structure as demanding as a novel.... Every talent has its terms — its nature, its scope, its force; also its term, a tenure, a life span.... Not everyone can be fruitful forever.
Interviewer: Before you were retired, you were famous for putting in long, long days. Now that you’ve stopped writing, what do you do with all that free time?
Philip Roth: I read — strangely or not so strangely, very little fiction. I spent my whole working life reading fiction, teaching fiction, studying fiction and writing fiction. I thought of little else until about seven years ago. Since then I’ve spent a good part of each day reading history, mainly American history but also modern European history. Reading has taken the place of writing, and constitutes the major part, the stimulus, of my thinking life.
Read the whole article at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/books/review/philip-roth-interview.html
An article where I was quoted in the Herald Careers section on Saturday
Dr Jon Glass is the first to admit that he's the type of person who fills his life with activities. So when, a few years ago in his early to mid 60s, he retired from a 30-year executive career he soon realised a twilight career was in order.
"I decided to set up a business helping people who were fully retired or semi-retired think through all the issues that come up in that context," says Glass, now founder of retirement coaching consultancy 64 Plus.
While retirement coaching isn't yet widely recognised, Glass believes it should be, given that retirement is one of life's major life transitions.
"Retirement is a massive opportunity. It's good to get someone to help you think through all the possible paths it could take," he says.
While Glass emphasises that retirement looks different for each individual, he knows he's not alone in one regard. Search Google for retirement images and you don't get the full story.
"You see a whole lot of images of grey-haired people on the beach at sunset, having a drink. Terrific, but I don't think that's retirement. I call that a holiday," he says.
How does it feel?
Retirement from work for some people entails an abrupt shift from work to nonwork; for others a gradual shift via the pathway of part-time work.
Suppose you are engaged in that gradual shift, via part-time work. What are some of the feelings you can have that might indicate that you are on your way to full retirement? Here are some potential signs:
· You are losing track of time, deadlines having become less common
· You no longer need to find free time, as it is “everywhere” in your life
· You feel “retired”, which I admit is not a well-defined term!
· You talk less about “we” when discussing your colleagues at work
The point I want to make is that you don’t need to sleepwalk into retirement. When these feelings come upon you it may be the time to talk to a coach.
Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.
Ideas about ideas
The Italian Renaissance poet Ariosto, who is not well-known in the English-speaking world, was once asked by his patron Ippolito d’Este:Where did you find so many stories?
How is this relevant to coaching you ask, well that is also a good question. The essence of retirement coaching is for the client to find MEANING in his/her life, postwork. These problems are notoriously difficult to think through without some sort of help. Not impossible, but not easy.
The coach assists the client to generate ideas or stories that can help to define his/her future self. Where do these ideas come from? We don’t need to ask Ariosto or any other poet or writer, because there is a more widely-known model.
As professional investors know, you typically build a portfolio strategy around certain ideas, or stories, that concern stocks, bonds and other markets. These ideas and stories can be found through talking, discussing, reading. Then you sift through them for the most meaningful ideas and stories at that moment, analyse them and if - acceptable - action them.
So a retired person can locate suitable ideas and stories that relate to his/her MEANING by talking, discussing, reading - all under the watchful eye of a coach – sift for the best of them at that time; then put them into play.
Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.
Time in retirement
When you are postwork a funny thing happens with time and how you feel about time. It’s as if time stretches. What does this mean?
It means that you can feel very busy with your activities even though, by the standards of when you worked full-time, your diary may look patchy and bare. No back-to-back meetings any more.
It’s your choice as to how you fill your day, but I think there is one important consideration. That is to try to find some – not all – activities that have meaning for you. I keep returning to this word which, I believe, will constitute your quality time postwork. So, to finish, some tips:
· Be flexible, try many things
· Build networks of friends
· Be bored; sometimes
· Beware of daytime TV
Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.
What is your personal AAA Rating?
Money is relevant to retirement. We can’t deny it. Now that you are about to retire, or have retired recently or are working part-time on your way there; you probably have a financial plan in place with your financial planner. Good, now for your lifestyle.
Your AAA Rating is how YOU answer this question: is your Annual income Adequate to your Aspirations?
What does this mean? Simply stated, ask yourself if your annual cash flow from your pension account (and other investments) can support the life you want to lead in retirement.
This will help you set the scope for your search for meaning, the ultimate goal in 64PLUS’s 4M process, by allowing you to rule in and rule out certain activities. For example:
1) Not everyone will have a AAA Rating that allows unlimited first class travel.
2) However, most should be able to afford to take the educational courses they desire.
If you wish to discuss this and other retirement tips please contact me via the website.
Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.
Who am I?
Do you remember the parlour game called who am I, where you are given a series of clues and have to guess the identity of a person? For example, you hear that in 1492 the person sailed the ocean blue and, either at this stage you blurt out Columbus, or you ask for more clues - such as his nationality. And so on.
So before you retire when you are the subject of that game yourself, it might start by mentioning the work that you do. He is a salesman. Need more clues? OK, he is over the age of 30. And so on.
But after retirement when you are the subject of this game, there is something missing. Yes you are a parent, a son, a grandfather and such things; but what do you do?
This is one of the interesting challenges of retirement: how to define your role in the world: what exactly do you do? Who are you now?
You can work on a definition. It’s up to you! But you may benefit with some help from a retirement coach.
Retirement: you won’t know what it is like until you get there.