Recently, I was on a company trip with my husband who is a wealth advisor. It was an awards trip for high performers. It has been fun over the years to meet people across the country and become friends. In past years, the conversations focused on sharing best practices about how they structured, built, and enhanced their businesses.
Now these friends are in the fourth quarter of their careers, and our conversations are shifting into less familiar territory. Everyone had worked very hard to become star contributors to their businesses. Now they were starting to ask each other questions like How do I step away? How can I plan to transition out of the business?
In this article, I describe how athletes retire much earlier than most of us. They die twice because ending a career is a death. Life as we knew it is over. Transitioning is hard work. Many of us don’t understand the process of how to navigate this significant life change—moving from work to what’s next.
Financial advisors typically work independently, and as long as they are productive there is little to no pressure to retire. What I found interesting is how the questions with which they were struggling were still the same as other industries:
· What am I going to do with my time?
· How am I going to connect with people?
· How can I use my skills and talents?
· If I am what I do and I don’t do it anymore, then who am I?
Additional challenges and issues were described in this article. Research says 10,000 baby boomers are retiring daily; some call it the “silver tsunami.” Since baby boomers have had a major impact on the cultural and societal trends, there has been an explosion of sources of information to help you prepare for retirement—numerous books, films, and podcasts.
Interestingly, we tend to plan and prepare for every phase of life around these questions:
· Where to go to school in order to get into the college of my choice to start the career I want?
· How to network and get involved into the community to advance in one’s career?
· Is graduate school or a certification going to be an advantage?
But where do we learn how to prepare for life after one’s main career? Who teaches us how to make the rest of life the best of life?
There are organizations emerging as movements to help us prepare for the next phase of life. Chip Conley, co-founder of the Modern Elder Academy (MEA), calls it “the world’s first wisdom midlife school.” Sage-ing International (SI) is another organization focused on helping people harvest and transmit wisdom to future generations.
My involvement in both MEA and SI has changed my life in many positive ways. I learned how to navigate life transitions with others going through similar changes. Both organizations focus on pushing back on societal stereotypes that claim growing old means becoming irrelevant and invisible. We learn that retirement is not about withdrawal and decline, but about freedom and flexibility to pursue new opportunities of growth. These are only two of many organizations targeted toward people age 50+ on how to consciously continue to grow and develop throughout our lives.
Life is not linear and one size does not fit all. But based on my experience in coaching, facilitating workshops, and professional development on the topic of retirement, below are my ten tips for preparing for retirement regardless of industry:
1. Make intentional choices and decisions. It takes time and intentional thought to decide what to do next.
2. Use your time while you are still working wisely. Seek out role models, make connections, and explore options.
3. Be wise about how you spend your time and with whom. The people with whom you surround yourself influence your attitudes and behaviors.
4. Choose to be around positive people and people of all ages. Attitudes are contagious.
5. Discover your purpose. Living with meaning adds to health and longevity.
6. Have conversations with your significant other. Share your vision of the future and how you want to live the rest of your lives together.
7. Leave a legacy. Find ways to share what matters most to you with those whom matter most.
8. Stay curious. Continuing to grow is enhanced by a sense of curiosity.
9. Be interested and engaged. This facilitates you staying relevant, curious and engaged.
10. Continue to learn and to grow. Make the rest of life the best of life.