The Wonder of Work

I’ve been talking a lot about retirement and how to keep busy and motivated. Not only is it helpful to create more goals, it’s also really smart to become friends with a word we mostly think of as a bad thing–work.

In the book, When All You Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough, Harold Kushner lists the many super benefits of 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 some 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, paraphrasing a couple lines from Ecclesiastes in the bible, also wrote, “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.”

After I read Kusher’s book some 12 years ago, I began to re-dedicate and re-motivate my life with the work I loved to do. Of course, I still spend plenty of time enjoying life so I’ll keep playing and traveling but let’s face it, you can’t realistically play tennis, work out, hike in the mountains, and watch movies for 8 to 10 hours a day, every day, but you can work that long!

In other words, if you’re feeling bored or aimless, you can find great fulfillment in the accomplishments found in hard work. You can also meet fascinating people, contribute to humanity and, as an added bonus, make a bit more money along the way. So don’t try to get away from work. See it as another wonderful thing that can lift your life to great new heights.

For Love of Work

Last week, I said I would tell more of the story about Bunker Bean who I spoke about in the last couple of posts. However, I am going to do that next week as I have something else I want to share with you first.

Recently, I was thumbing through a great book that I read years ago entitled When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough by Harold Kushner. As I always do when I read a book, I wrote down many of the most interesting, helpful, and motivating quotes and comments that the author made. These notes are a great way to go back and easily refresh my memory since they highlight those points that hit me the hardest and helped lift my thoughts, actions, and life to a higher level.

Here are some of the points in this book that really helped me, especially the comments about work and how important it is for all of us:

l. Work can be the scaffolding that holds up our adult lives. (I need to keep remembering this as being retired makes it more difficult to find and do the best kinds of work for me.)

2. The key to one’s happiness is to find pleasure in our work and to use our abilities–no wasting them!

3. Our souls are hungry for meaning.

4. We work for meaning. We work so our days will not be empty of meaning!

5. Do not expect that life will always be fair.

6. For ultimate satisfaction, lower the level of what you want to what you already have.

7. The affliction which drains so much of the sense of meaning from our lives these days is that disease of boredom.

Kushner makes several other notable points in this book that are not easily summarized and put into a list. For example, he writes, “Asked, “’What do you do?’ we invariably respond in terms of our work, not our hobbies or organizational commitments,” implying that work is often our identity.

About himself, he notes that, “I work because I have a family to support and bills to pay. But I work also because it puts me in touch with people and helps me think of myself as a competent, contributing person.”

Kushner also writes that “there is something satisfying about being challenged to do something hard and then doing it. I think it must have been what Ecclesiastes had in mind when he said to us, in effect, ‘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 can still give meaning to your life if you take it seriously and do it with all your might.’”

I think the author makes many wonderful comments and offers some very helpful advice. It’s a great little book and I highly encourage you to get it and read it but, most importantly, LIVE by the advice that you think will make a big difference in your life, a difference for the better.

Retirement Can Create a Better World

I want to write a bit more about last week’s theme of retirement – how it can be good, bad or sometimes very ugly. Even if you are many years away from retirement, you can make your retirement much better and have an easier transition if you are aware of some of the pitfalls that many people stumble into when they retire. I want to share a few secrets to making your retirement transition quite comfortable and pleasant.

Part of the reason I want to share these points is that, for me, retirement came close to driving me seriously crazy. It made me feel worthless and caused me to have big mood swings. Last week I wrote about some of the great and promising ideas from Patrice Jenkin’s book, What Will I Do All Day. She points out that many people go into retirement without realizing how critically important it is for them to still have routine and structure in their lives. Most people’s work lives automatically give them those two critical things. Plus, their work usually results in a lot of measurable production which lifts the human mind and spirit and gives us great personal satisfaction. The huge problem comes when a person retires and most, if not all, of those satisfying items quickly disappear. One other thing that also goes away or is often greatly diminished is one’s social life!

So, what is an excellent antidote to the retirement blues and the great letdown? In one word it’s WORK. But it has to be much more than just busy work. It has to be meaningful and productive.  Ideally, it’s doing something that you love and something that helps other people. It should be something that helps make the world a better place because, although you don’t really need to make a dime out of doing that work, it needs to be purposeful.

For me, the answer was going for the great feelings I get from donating my time and money to charity work. What is especially appealing to me is helping kids. Even doing a little thing like reading to them or telling simple, fun stories on a regular basis is fulfilling and purposeful. Even more fulfilling for me is teaching, because of my background and my passion.

I’ve done a little of this already, but I’ve just begun this particular new mission in life. The time I spend with the kids involves simple things but it is now part of my routine and structure and is a huge mood lifter for both me and the kids. A similar mission could do the same for you no matter what charity you choose. In a small but growing way, we can make the world a better place all while staying fulfilled and purposeful in our retirement.

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.

The Secret to True Contentment: Work

I know everybody thinks that life is about getting to a place where you don’t have to work, where you can just take it easy and drink cocktails while sitting by the pool but I can tell you from personal experience, that is a road with few rewards. Work—having a job, a business, or personal objectives you are actively striving for—is something you will never want to be without. Work is not just for paying the bills, it is essential to having a fulfilling life.

Studies have shown that people are four times more likely to have a sense of contentment from work than they do from watching TV. That’s a pretty impressive statistic and yet, the majority of people (especially in the good ole U.S. of A.) spend huge amounts of time watching the tube. So why do we choose to watch TV rather than get to work on things that would further our personal and professional goals as well as provide us with more contentment?

It’s because work is hard. Worthwhile and challenging tasks usually take the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears and sometimes end up being a constant uphill struggle. Instinctively, we want to avoid what is difficult and TV can fill our time without taxing our brains or body. But it is the difficult work, the complicated and challenging goals we face in our day job or the effort we put into building a dream, that makes what we accomplish so satisfying. Watching TV, on the other hand, accomplishes little if anything and is not, at the end of the day, very fulfilling.

You probably enjoy games of some sort—tennis, golf, chess, sodoku, etc.—and you play because of the challenge and the way you get lost in it, looking forward to seeing what you can accomplish or motivated by that potential win. Likewise, in your work, if you take time to set difficult and complex goals and totally throw yourself into reaching those objectives, you will find that your contentment and happiness will soar, buoyed by your progress and that potential, if not actualized, win.

Bottom line: set up some very tough challenges for yourself, pushing yourself to do more complex and novel things (whether you’re a millionaire now or still working on it!). It’s the work that will lead you to a richer and more satisfying life and make the down time by the pool much more enjoyable.