The Challenge of Retirement

For those of you that have recently retired, or if you are approaching retirement and doing some planning, there are a few unexpected surprises that might be waiting for you. At least there were for me.

I had looked forward to being retired and having all that extra time to do anything I wanted to like travel, play more tennis, and just have a great time. Well, I must tell you, when that day arrived, I was in for an enormous surprise.

I don’t think most of us realize what a great challenge retirement can be. It didn’t hit me immediately, but after a few months of it, I found myself going stir crazy. I came to realize that we humans need structure and a routine. Without that, we can become very frustrated. I talked to a few friends that had retired a year or so before I did and they told me that the same thing hit them. We all need a reason to get out of bed in the morning and I didn’t have any routine or daily plans to motivate me.

At that point, I began to see how very important things like going to the office and interacting with others were for us humans. I missed the social part of my work life and struggled with feelings of worthlessness because I wasn’t producing anything. We thrive on being productive which helps those around us and lifts our brain and lives to a higher level. Sure, I can travel more and have great fun hanging out with my kids, grandkids, and friends, but we need to be contributing to our lives and the world around us in some way as well.

My advice to everyone is to plan for retirement, not just financially, but in what you will do with your time. Make lists and talk with others that have retired or are heading that way fairly soon to see what, if anything, they are planning. It’s a good idea to look at your life and think about what brings you the greatest pleasure and what stimulates your brain and then see if you can build your retirement around those things.

Patrice Jenkins, PhD, wrote a brilliant book called What Will I Do All Day? Wisdom to Get Over Retirement and on with Living. In the book, she offers some great advice: “Creating meaningful work in retirement provides an opportunity to step out of your comfort zone. If you’d like to, you can redefine yourself — try something new and different… In retirement, you have the freedom to be anything that suits you.”

Even if you are many years away from retirement, it’s not too early to do some thinking and planning now. I think you will be very glad that you did when those retirement days come around.

The Mutual Benefits of Writing

Life can be so very interesting and exciting. It’s amazing to me that such a great source of excitement and energy, as well as fascinating discoveries for my brain, comes from just writing. I’ve found, over the years that I’ve been writing, that my words can affect me as much as they can affect any reader.

Whether it’s a book or my weekly blog, and especially if I’m writing about a subject that I’m not very good at or one that I’m not actively doing, I often find that the writing gets me thinking about it, and I begin changing and improving myself. So, not only do I write about it, writing about it makes me do it as well. I’ve said this many times over the years — whenever I preach or write to others, I am also talking to myself!

Whether it’s reading more, exercising, getting more social, or, actually, pretty much anything, I do more of the helpful things I write about after I write about it. I guess the process of writing about a behavior or habit makes an impression on my brain and that little nudge can make a big, big difference in my life. What the brain is reminded of can really make a huge difference in the lives of so many of us humans, including both good and bad things.

I don’t think most of us fully realize the great power of the brain and how we can direct it to help us accomplish almost anything we want to do in our lives. When we spend time writing about a particular subject, our brains take the hint and push us to do more about it. That is one huge benefit we can get from writing. Whether we write it in a letter to someone or in a journal or diary (or, for me, writing in my weekly blog), we usually come to understand and retain that information as well as having a chance to learn a lot about ourselves.

Wow, having now written about all the good stuff writing can do for me, I’ve decided to do a lot more of it. How about you?

Statistics Are on Your Side

So many things in our lives can be looked at as a matter of statistical probabilities. To me, one of those statistics that people either don’t know about or haven’t really considered is the chance of dying in an airplane. I think this lack of knowledge may be why so many people are afraid to fly to the extent that they rarely or never do. Or if they do fly, it’s not very often and they spend most of the flight scared senseless.

It’s too bad that fear of flying is so common. There is so much of our great world to see and explore. I love visiting new countries and meeting people that are so different from me. I find those differences fascinating. Those experiences are part of why I think this fear of flying is such a crazy thing. It seems like people would want to get over that fear for the chance of having all those wonderful experiences.

The thing is, the statistics about the safety of flying are impressive and should be encouraging. The odds of dying on a commercial airplane are around 1 in 11,000,000. That’s 11 million! In 2019, the chance of your plane having an accident with any fatalities on board was one in 5.58 million flights. Those are very great odds and should take most, if not all, of your flying fears and set them aside. Take those odds and compare them to dying in a car, which was around 1 out of 9000 in 2019. Also consider that, in the United States, there has not been a fatal commercial flight since 2009. That’s how safe flying is these days!

The comfort found in those statistics can also be found in statistics about other things, such as starting and running your own business or investing in more or bigger real estate deals as well as finding great deals. Starting a small business, which most people think is a terribly hard thing to do, has a success rate of 80% after two years and over half will continue to have viable businesses after five years. That’s pretty encouraging, especially if you’re one of those who work hard and work smart! And investing in real estate has long been considered one of the best ways to have a successful financial life.

It’s not a bad idea for all of us to do a bit of research on anything that we fear, especially those things that hold us back from enjoying life or being successful. You can look up statistics on almost anything online.

You not only have great access to statistics on the Internet, but you can also find people who can help encourage you with their success and maybe even give you a leg up on your own. People who have done what you want to do and have been very successful are a wonderful source and can lift your goals, objectives, and success to great heights. My mentors have been a huge part of my success. And finding mentors greatly increases your statistical chances of succeeding and reaching your goals!

Narrow Your Focus

I know I’ve been talking a lot lately about acting on your goals, but there are smart ways to go about that and not so useful ways. So, this week, I wanted to talk about a really important part of taking action that makes the action you take not only more productive but makes it far more likely that you’ll achieve those goals. What I want to talk about is summed up really well in this quote:

Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all of your energies on a limited set of targets. — Nido Qubein

How true. Trying to work on all of your goals at once requires that you split your time and resources among them. That makes it far less likely that you’ll accomplish what you’re after, or at least not to the extent that you might have hoped. But what if you spend all your time and resources on just one goal?

For example, maybe you’d like to be a great at a bunch of sports like tennis, baseball, hockey, and football. Can you imagine trying to work out, learn, practice, and play all four of those sports at the same time? You might be able to do it, but you wouldn’t be great at any one of them. Now, if you picked just one sport and put all your energy and practice time into improving your skills and stamina in it, don’t you think you’d be very good, if not great, at it in a fairly short span of time?

If you have set multiple goals this year, take a step back and choose just one or two to work on for now. Pick the most important or the most urgent. If you choose two, try to pick ones that are in two very different areas of your life. For instance, you can work on jumpstarting a new career while aiming to do some sort of exercise every day. With those goals, you won’t be trying to focus on more than one objective during any one part of your day.

I’m not saying you need to put aside or forget your other goals. You can always work a little here and there on them, preparing for the time when you can give them the focus needed to work on them productively. You just need to keep in mind that you should concentrate on a “limited set of targets” so you have enough energy and enthusiasm to take the action needed and be super successful!

2022: A Year of Action

Here we are again. We have a whole new year in front of us and many of us are making plans, renewing commitments, and generally trying to figure out what we want to accomplish this year. I know I have more than a few things that I’m ready to get to work on!

Regardless of what any of us plan to do, there is one thing we all have in common. We MUST take action, real solid action, for any plan, goal, or dream to become reality.

That first step, the one that shows true action and commitment, is more important than any other step you take because it will be the impetus and motivation for every step afterwards. But don’t fool yourself about what a first step is.

Reading a book, looking stuff up on the internet, or asking your friends’ opinions may feel like first steps, but they are really just part of the planning, and planning is not what actually makes things happen. The first real step occurs when you invest something valuable or take a real risk with your money, time, or ego.

For example:

• Throwing out all the junk food in your house is a true first step to a better diet.
• Paying a lawyer to draw up your business organization papers shows a real commitment to starting on your entrepreneurial path.
• Joining a writer’s group that requires you to write 10 pages a week makes you accountable and shows yourself and other how serious you are about writing that novel.

So, what is that first important, substantial, and invested step you need to take to get your plans rolling? If you’re not sure, take the time to write out what your first steps are. Then ask yourself which of those steps require so kind of personal, time, or financial investment. The ones that do are your first real steps, the ones that will get you truly get you on your way. So, make those your priority.

If you feel like you might still need a little push to take those first substantial steps, or you need some additional inspiration, try reading my book again, How to Ignite Your Passion for Living. If you haven’t read it, then definitely get a copy and read it. Then get to work.

Let’s see what wonderful things we can make happen in 2022 by taking action now!