HOW TO USE
THIS BOOK
This book isn’t supposed to look pretty sitting on a table. This book is a tool for transforming your life. Write in it! Get it dirty! Use it for taking notes. Photocopy pages out of it. Try out your thoughts in the workbook sections. Experiment in the planning sections. Measure your progress by recording your thoughts and results in the weekly planning and accomplishment section.
Learn and grow.
TURNING IN THE TITLE
We’ve all heard the stories. People facing immediate death never wish that they had spent more time at work. I believe these stories ring true because we all understand that we are more than a president, an accountant, an analyst, an assistant. We are more.
Being more does not end in retirement. In fact, retirement is the perfect time to add MORE to MORE. To leave a legacy.
Who are you? You are more than a fancy job title. You have value simply by being a human being. You’ve always had this value and you always will.
The danger comes when we allow ourselves to be defined by our job, our title, and the size of our paycheck. The danger comes when we ask, “When it is gone, what is left?” You are. You are left. You, with your skill, talent, and ability to make a difference. You. Who are you?
Life is full of changes. When we are no longer students, we adjust and change. When we choose to leave a career to raise a family, we adjust and change. When our last child leaves for college and we are left with an empty nest, we adjust and change. When we retire, it’s one more change. What is exciting about this change?
You now have the opportunity to focus on the people and things that really matter!
NOW IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO FIND CLARITY
Research tells us that if we want to understand how we feel about something, we go a step beyond just thinking about it or even talking about it. We write it down. We choose the deadline. We define the steps to get there. Through writing we are able to gain clarity. Our jumbled thoughts find their order on the page.
Two camps. What camp are you in?
There are two retirement camps. Which one do you fall into? It has been my experience that in Camp One you’ll find people who have been planning and looking forward to retirement since the day they started their first real job. As they have gotten closer to THE DAY, they’ve inserted a countdown as a screensaver on their work computer. And on the day they retire, they nearly dance out the door.
In Camp Two there are people who “do not go gentle into the good night.” They go out the door kicking and screaming, their fingers tightly gripping the door jamb of their office because retirement looms before them like an empty abyss.
WHAT CAMP ARE YOU IN
WHAT THINGS DID YOU DO
TO PREPARE FOR THIS DAY?
WHAT DID RETIREMENT LOOK LIKE FOR YOUR PARENTS?
WHAT DOES YOUR PARTNER ENVISION FOR YOUR RETIREMENT?
Ask your partner his or her thoughts.
WHAT DO YOU THINK RETIREMENT
WILL LOOK LIKE FOR YOUR
CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN?
MY BELIEF WINDOW
You possess a Belief Window. Can you see it?
Can you touch it? No, but it is part of you.
It hangs right in front of your face.
When you move, it moves with you.
This Belief Window controls how you see the world because you see everything through it. When you establish a personal belief, you write it on your Belief Window.
Just because you write it, however, does not make it true. Over time you accumulate thousands of beliefs on your Belief Window. Some beliefs are true, some are not. Some are rational, some are not. But what they all do is meet a need you have. You need to define the world around you, and your Belief Window helps you do just that.
You might think all dentists like to inflict pain. You might think white cars are easier to keep clean. You might think fountain drinks are better than canned. We all have beliefs. And we all collect them on our Belief Window.
What beliefs about retirement are on your Belief Window?
•Unemployed people are lazy
•Personal value only comes through hard work
•Important people have important titles
•If I’m busy, I’m important
How do my beliefs control the way I see retirement?
“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”
—Sophia Loren
HOW DO I PERCEIVE RETIREMENT?
List your beliefs regarding retirement.
AVOID AWFULIZING YOUR RETIREMENT!
I came across a term the other day that made me stop for a minute and think. The term was “awfulizing retirement.”
What does it mean to “awfulize retirement”? According to the author who coined it, Jonathan Looks, it means to think so much about the things that could go wrong that you’re afraid to move forward. 1
He wrote: When pondering retirement, many people fantasize about, say, life on the beach or having time to write the next great American novel or finally being able to spend more time with our grandchildren. But when action and decision-making are required, fear distorts the picture. Opportunity starts to look like a nightmare. The human brain is an amazing thing, but it doesn’t deal with uncertainty very well.
Retirement is a bet on the future, and no one can anticipate all the unknowns. The data is necessarily incomplete. When confronted with incomplete data, our brains look at the information gaps and fills them with fear. To the brain, anything is better than ambiguity.
In our mind, the worst case scenarios suddenly become the most likely of circumstances. We begin to doubt our calculations. We begin to doubt the experts. At the very time we need to trust our judgment the most, fear gets into our head, distorts our outlook and overwhelms all our assumptions.
Hence the term psychologists use to define
this phenomenon: awfulizing.
