Don’t Retire–Keep Engaged!

A few weeks ago my message was all about how critically important “Work” is for every human being on the planet. Well, I was waiting to catch a flight from Paris to Salt Lake City earlier this week and when I saw the cover story on Fortune Magazine. It really grabbed my attention. Why? Get this … the story is all about a 72 year old guy who is still working his buns off and risking huge amounts of money. Shouldn’t he be retired and taking it easy?

Ok you could assume that maybe he needs the money and can’t retire yet. But no, he’s a multi-billionaire! So why then is he still working and on top of that risking mega money to develop what Fortune calls “America’s Biggest Real Estate Project …Ever”.

I will tell you at least one very good reason why. Because he knows that to retire and just sit by the pool drinking Mai Tai’s–which he certainly can afford to do–will greatly diminish, if not totally destroy, his physical and mental health and at the same time it will do major damage to his sense of self-worth. So instead of letting himself wither away, Stephen Ross, the 72 year old I’m speaking of, is working on a 20 billion dollar project that is set to reinvent a huge swath of New York City. That would keep someone as sharp as they can be and certainly engaged!

As anyone who has been reading my blog knows I am closing in on the big 70 (only 200 days now), and I find myself, even though I don’t need the money, looking for and engaging myself in more and more projects and adventures (like these last 3 weeks in Europe.) I find that the harder I push myself towards social, physical, and financial goals the better I feel. However, because I don’t need to do anything at all I need to push very hard to stay active and keep on working! But I always see the result and I can tell you, it more than just a little worth it.

I think you can probably tell that I am trying to push any and all of my readers to do the same. Even if you are still young and not facing the 65 year old retirement number or are already pushing yourself towards big goals you can probably still be much more engaged and excited by setting even tougher goals. Plus you could encourage your parents, siblings, friends and neighbors who might be on the verge of retirement or already retired and give them a gentle nudge (or a kick in the butt!) to encourage them toward enhancing their lives by more fully engaging in work and staying super active in all parts of their lives. They will reap such huge rewards if they do.

 

A Meaningful Life Means Having Meaningful Work

Last week I started talking about the importance of that one thing we all love to complain about but need so badly as well—Work! We don’t need it just for the money either!

In the book I brought up last week, “When All You Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough “, Harold Kushner lists  the many super benefits to working. He notes “that we work for meaning as much as for money. We work so that our days will not be empty of meaning … but the key to our happiness, to our being able to find pleasure in our work, is the sense that we are using our abilities, not wasting them, and that we are being appreciated for it. Whatever it is in your power to do, do it with all your might.”

Wow … there is real wisdom and truth in what he is saying and of course that’s a big reason we all should be involved in the kind of work that we have a real passion for, even if that kind of work doesn’t pay much. Kushner says “If we are lucky, we will find ourselves at a place in life where we can derive pleasure from our work. Some of us, if we are lucky, will see ourselves launched on new careers in mid-life which will give us that elusive feeling of pleasure”.

Kushner is a Rabbi and he loves what he does, even when the work he has to do involves a sad event. “In a strange way, I feel good when I am officiating at a funeral,” he says. “For years, I couldn’t understand that feeling. I thought there might be something perverse about me, to enjoy such moments. But I understand it now. At times like that, I feel alive and engaged. I know that I am not merely present but that I am making a difference.”

Harold Kushner, paraphrasing lines in Ecclesiastes in the bible, says “If you are not going to win a Nobel Prize for your work, if it is not going to make you rich and famous, it still can give meaning to your life if you take it seriously and do it with all your might”.

I am absolutely convinced that work is a powerful and wonderful thing for our lives and makes us feel so much better about everything. As the novelist Wallace Stegner said “More people than would probably admit it find in work the scaffolding that holds up their adult lives.”

So yes, after learning–or I should say re-learning–all this about work, I have begun to re-dedicate and re-motivate my life to the work I love to do. Of course, we all need a break and so I will keep playing and traveling but these will be part time activities, because let’s face it, you can’t realistically play tennis, work out, hike in the mountains, watch movies or even have sex for 8 to 10 hours a day but you can work that long! You can dump all of your boredom and find great fulfillment in your accomplishments with hard work. You can also meet more fascinating people, contribute to humanity and, as an added bonus, even make a bit more money along the way. That’s a win-win-win from every angle!

 

The Answer to Boredom: Work

Yesterday day I had lunch with a very good, longtime friend. He had recently retired from working at the business he owned and we talked a lot about that transition from being a full time worker into a retiree. We talked about some of the big challenges a person faces when they hit retirement. It’s something that most people look forward to their entire working lives, but it’s a huge trap or at least it can be and not a very nice one.

The bottom line of our conversation was summed up in my friend’s comment “I am bored out of my mind!” And believe me, I know exactly what he is feeling! Been there, done that–twice. The first time was when I had made quite a few million dollars and just turned 40 and thought “Wow, I don’t have to work anymore. I think I will retire.” So I did but quickly discovered that I was, yes, bored out of my mind! I found I craved that meaningful purpose that having an occupation gave me so I jumped right back into work and what a relief that was! I instantly felt so much better.

My second retirement was just about 2 years ago when I turned my company over to my kids and decided to play more tennis and travel more. That was great for the first 2 or 3 months but then I started feeling unfulfilled and constantly found myself wandering around the house and driving my wife crazy. I knew something was wrong and my brain kept saying “Ok … you are no longer an entrepreneurial business type guy and as you’re not doing much writing any more you aren’t much of an author, so just what the hell are you?”

I tried to busy myself with more tennis, workouts, mountain hikes and travel and, yes, that helped but it just wasn’t enough. Then quite suddenly something motivated me to pick up an old book that I had read a couple of times before. I did this as part of my philosophy learned from my late great mentor, Paul J Meyer, that philosophy being that you should pick a few dozen or even a hundred of the very best books you’ve ever read then read them multiple times. Since we all forget so much of what we’ve read and learned at any one time, rereading is necessary.

I began reading Harold Kushner’s wonderful book “When All You Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough: The Search for a Life That Matters” It was while reading this that the key to solving my struggles with retirement and boredom hit me full in the face. What was it that Kushner said in his book that was such a breakthrough for me? It was simply uttering that good ole four letter word “WORK”!

Don’t laugh. This really is the answer to boredom and does give one a major power lift to the soul, the mind, and the body as well as a big time enhancement to self-worth. And yet that was the very thing we think we want to leave behind. But that thinking is wrong. We need work. And for more than just a paycheck!

Next week we’ll talk more about this concept of work being so very important to us and why. But for now, whether you are still working or retired, realize that having a purpose each day is what makes life fulfilling and that the idea of retirement should be an opportunity to work as you like, not to stop working altogether.

You Need Work and Breaks to Appreciate Both

So many people retire and shortly after retiring they stop doing things, stop going places and stop pushing themselves. Then they stop permanently and totally. They assume “room temperature”. Yes … I mean they die, long before they should! Retirement doesn’t mean inactivity. Just the opposite.

Some people worry they might push themselves too hard. But the thing is, if you keep busy and then take breaks regularly, both the hard work and the time off will be much more rewarding and enjoyable and keeping a balance between them will keep you from pushing yourself too much.

Kimberly and I have been really working hard on her recovery from her surgery and a half dozen other projects.   In fact we’ve been so busy we almost cancelled a quick trip to Las Vegas to spend time with our great Swiss friend Reto Moro and his beautiful daughter Anna and her friend Anouk.  But thankfully we pushed ourselves to “take a break” even though it was only for 2 days. Wow what a great and refreshing break it was.  Not so much for the excitement that comes from that crazy city of action and shows and such but from getting together with great friends. I met Reto and his mom quite by accident, almost 30 years ago on the tennis court in Garmish Germany and we’ve been great friends ever since. It’s such a treat to spend time with them and the perfect break from our busy life.

The bottom line—and yes, I was chatting about this last week but it can’t be said too much—is never stop pushing yourself to stay active, regardless of your age, but also remember to never make “your pause” or “your break” a permanent state of living. You need both to appreciate either!

Getting Away from It All Should Never Be Forever

I think most of us know that busy lives are usually happy lives. But I think we’ve also been sold a bill of goods with our thinking that if we could only make lots of money then we could quit or retire and sit by the pool drinking Mai Tai’s the rest of our lives and be happy as pigs in slop. I am here to tell you that it just ain’t true!

We think this because when we are working hard and staying busy and then we take a break –going on vacation or a quick getaway–it makes us feel so good and refreshed that we mistakenly believe that if we could just do that all the time we’d have a permanent refreshed and a super great feeling.  But it doesn’t work like that. The fact is, if we don’t do the hard work then it’s really not a break and it doesn’t give us any reward or, at most, very little reward. We must all burn into our brains that the pause or the break should always remain as just that and never become a permanent thing.

Look at the recent London Olympics. Think of the four years of work that lead up to the moment we watched those young people step up on the award platform. Those award ceremonies were their break and their reward and you could see how immensely they enjoyed it. But what would become of those athletes lives if they sat back, doing nothing, trying to make that super reward moment last the rest of their lives without doing any more hard work? We can all imagine it, their lives going quickly downhill because each day there would be nothing to look forward to.

We all need to take a much harder look at our own lives and make sure we don’t ever turn the pause into a permanent state of living.  Passionate, fulfilled lives come from action and staying busy. Push yourself hard then, and only then, take a break and celebrate your hard work and accomplishments.

35 Years Is Enough

When you ‘retire’ it is not time to sit down and watch the world go by. It is time to go re-read your favorite 10, 20 or 100 books, to re-learn all those things that may have slipped slowly away over the years. It’s time to re-connect with old friends and make new friends. It’s time to start a new business or donate your time to a great cause. It’s time to visit a few 3rd world countries and see how many people you can help. It’s time to improve learn, and re-learn.

If you are thinking, “Hey, I don’t have enough energy to do some let alone all of the above”, well, then maybe you need to re-fire yourself by setting a goal to generate more energy. I am talking about rebuilding your body and mind through a regiment of physical exercise and a super-charged diet. Eat more and more fruits and veggies. Set a goal to stop sitting around just watching TV. Get up and move about. You’ll see that the movement itself, whether it’s walking, running, hiking, tennis, bowling even just playing pool, will energize and re-fires you all by itself.

Then once you have some of that renewed energy running through you, get back to living, not retiring. You have so many more years yet and so much to do.

Never retire–Re-fire!

Recently I got a phone call from a friend I knew when we were 20. As it turns out my friend, Keith Karren, has written a great book, “Boomer”, about the issues facing baby boomers as they head into retirement. Throughout the book Keith keeps saying, “Never retire–just re-fire”, a sentiment not very different from what I say in my book “How to Ignite Your Passion for Living”. However, Keith goes a little deeper when it comes to applying this to retirement.

We got to talking about this huge problem that most retired people face. They find themselves thinking “Who am I if I am no longer a business person, teacher, doctor, pilot or clerk?” Sure, at first it seems just wonderful not to have to go to work every day but after a while you miss the structure, camaraderie, goals, etc. You say “Oh, I’m retired now” when people ask what you do and you don’t even know what that means. If you think about it, retired is a terrible word. It comes across as a label that says your life is over, that it is worthless and has little or no meaning.

Well my old friend Keith writes all about this problem in his book. When I first read “Never retire–just re-fire” I was myself, fired up by this phrase. The idea of re-firing is to get you excited or re-excited about living. It means setting new goals and totally re-energizing yourself for this next phase of your life. And that’s a heck of a lot better than sitting around waiting to die. When you retire, you still have another 25-35 years of living yet to do. Just think of all you did in your last 35 years! That’s a lot of time to do a ton of exciting and productive things. Just trade in your retirement for a bit of re-fire-ment!

Life Should Not Be a String of Sundays

It’s so easy to get overly relaxed when you are in Hawaii as I have been these last few weeks. These relaxing days do allow me to reach some major mental breakthroughs and really think through the ideas that come to me. This trip out, I was really struck by how lost I can feel, even during these relaxing days and it got me thinking about how common this feeling can be for people in mid and later life. You’ve worked so hard for years, looking forward to retirement, and then once you get there, you start having these days where you simply have no direction. And you start to realize, the carefree retirement life isn’t quite what you expected.

I see this all the time in people around me and many times inside myself. When one retires or semi-retires it becomes like one long string of Sundays. For most people in America, Sunday is the lazy day, the day when you don’t have any particular plans, a day to unwind and not answer to the clock. But when you do this every day, it actually can get depressing.

As it turns out, Sunday morning has been found to be the most depressing time of the week. Seems very odd that this can be true but the reason is pretty simple. It’s because we don’t usually have any particular goals, plans or structure for that time of the week, unlike the work week and the often busy, errand and play day on Saturday. Likewise, when a person retires, the constant structure of their life is gone and without those goals and deadlines, they begin to feel lost.

Retirement is not a bad thing. I can certainly attest to its advantages. But even in retirement, there should be goals and plans. It’s just that this time, you don’t have an employer to please, or a family to provide for so you can determine just what you want to do without those concerns. The key is having the structure, the challenges, and the hopes that made you get up every day before retirement. You don’t stop having dreams when you get older, so there is no reason to stop making plans.

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