Contemporary Retirement

I came across a useful-looking site on my travels yesterday – AOL’s www.coaches.com which offers all kinds of advice in the form of articles, mini-workshops, video clips and message boards from experts such as Tom Peters, Mary Hunt, John Gray and Stephen Covey. Definitely worth a look…

Yesterday marked the launch of my new retirement coaching website - Contemporary Retirement Coaching - you can take a sneaky peak at it at www.contemporaryretirementcoaching.com. I had previously been advertising my retirement coaching services from my more generic life coaching website but I decided that the time had come to separate the two.

If someone you know has either just retired or is due to retire within the next 10 years or so, would you please point them in my direction? I have some special offers coming up, and, if they sign up for my free retirement tips, I'll make sure that they get to hear all about them.

'Some people will try and belittle your dreams. Some people will call you an old fool. Some people will be very supportive of you - those are the ones you want to hang around with.'

Jean Johnson

If you are one of many people who are aged 50+ and thinking about a change of career in the final third of their working life, or if you are retired (or about to retire) but want to carry on working in a new career, have a look at http://www.guidetoyourcareer.com/ . This site, run by Alan Bernstein, contains a whole host of resources to help you make that decision about what to do next…

Would you consider yourself to be a lifelong learner? Do you make an effort to get out there and learn something new on a regular basis? Do you constantly try to develop your skills and knowledge? I was thinking about this as I worked out this morning – I’ve noticed that I usually have a ‘thought theme’ for my workout and, by the time my workout ends, I often have a blog entry ‘written’ in my head just ready and waiting to be typed out.

One of the things that makes successful people stand out from the rest is a willingness to learn and keep on learning. Did you know that the majority of people never read a book once they leave school? Readers are leaders. Why not stop watching TV (or, at least, watch less of it) and commit to spending at least half an hour a day reading books that will develop your skills and knowledge? An added bonus of this is that a commitment to reading (and learning in general) could have a knock-on effect on your health and wellbeing in later years.

In his book, 'Aging with Grace', Dr David Snowden writes about a study he carried out which involved a group of 678 nuns. Many of the nuns were over 90 years of age and 6 of them were over 100 years of age, yet very few of them showed any signs of losing their faculties or developing Alzheimer's disease. Although the nuns had lead healthy lives - they were physically active and none of them drank or smoked - the researchers felt that their mental acuity was attributable to something more than this. Most of the nuns were teachers and they all shared a love of learning which meant that they were constantly reading and exposing themselves to stimulating new subjects and ideas. The nuns agreed to donate their brains to medical science after their death so that the study could be continued. Half of the brains analyzed were found to have fully-blown Alzheimer's disease in advanced stages - yet the nuns had never shown any signs or symptoms of this. A good advert for lifelong learning if ever you needed one!

So, what would you like to learn?
What interests you?
What would you like to know more about?
What skills would you like to develop?
What skills would be useful to you?
In which subject would you like to be known as an expert?

Take some action now. Track down that course you’ve always wanted to take. Sign up for a teleclass. Take yourself off to the local library...

What could you do to ensure that you continue to learn something new every day?

It is well documented that for every minute that you exercise, you add one minute to your life. This enables you at 85 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $5,000 per month.

Author Unknown

I was thinking about eyes whilst I was doing my workout this morning. More specifically, I was thinking about the way that your eyesight fails you as you get older and the fact that I wish I had hung on longer before I succumbed to wearing specs.

I used to pride myself on my eyesight. Both my parents wear glasses and have done for as long as I can remember and my brother started wearing glasses in his 30’s. When I hit 40, my eyesight was still perfect and I suppose I felt a bit smug really when everyone around me at work had to find their specs before they could read anything.

Then, when I was 43, all of a sudden (or so it seemed), I found that I was having a problem reading phone numbers in the directory. That was all. I could see everything else. It was just phone numbers that I was struggling with. So I decided to go for an eye test.

Now I know that, ideally, you should go for a regular eye test, whether you wear glasses or not. But I hadn’t. In fact, I’d never had one. So off I went, got myself tested and came out with a prescription which I duly exchanged for a pair of reading glasses and a free pair of prescription sunglasses.

That was the beginning of my problems. Within a month, I went from not being able to read the occasional phone number to being completely unable to read without glasses. Now I’m pretty sure that my eyes didn’t really deteriorate that much within the space of a month – in fact, if they did, they must have immediately stopped deteriorating at the end of the month, because my vision has remained the same ever since.

I’m sure that an optician would have an explanation for it and I certainly don't regret going for that initial eye test because diseases like Glaucoma can only be detected by regular testing, but, personally, I wish I’d just settled for a magnifying glass instead of a pair of specs…

I had a lovely surprise over the Easter holiday. On Easter Sunday, I was delighted to be contacted by my long-lost cousin. The last time we saw or heard from each other was at her Mum’s funeral, about 25 years ago. She was only a little girl at the time and she went to live with her Dad and we lost touch.

She found me through http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk/, a site which enables old friends and classmates to get in touch with each other again. We have so much to catch up on – she has 2 brothers and a sister with whom we also lost contact and we are already on our 5th email.

When I visited the Friends Reunited site to pick up her initial email, I found a message waiting there for me from Helen, an old friend of mine that I met when I was about 16. The message was sent to a disused email address of mine about 16 months ago and I never received it until Sunday.

It was so nice to hear from these women again. They are both people that I am delighted to be in touch with again and will do my best not to ‘lose’ in future. As we get older, people do disappear from our lives don’t they? People die or move away. Sometimes we argue with people and are too proud (or angry) to make the first move towards reconciliation...

Who have you ‘lost’ from your life that you would like to be in touch with again?

Which old and dear friend is due a phone call from you?

Which relationship do you take for granted and fail to nurture?

Who have you not seen for years and would really like to meet up with again?

And what are you going to do about it?

To find a role model of a contemporary retiree, I don’t need to look much further than my own dad. The first thing that my dad did upon retiring, was enrol as an undergraduate student for a Bachelor’s degree in History. Now, with his degree under his belt, he works as a volunteer museum curator, transcribes historical documents for the local library and is an active member of the town’s historical society.

Before his retirement, Dad was a marathon runner, and he continued to run in the London marathon until he was well into his 60’s. At 72 years of age, he is still a competitive athlete (although over shorter distances these days), consistently clocking up race victories in his age group (the over 70s), and he coaches other runners from his running club.

Recently, my Dad believed that he was going to have to call a halt to his running career because he began to suffer quite badly from an untreated hernia that he had had since he was a young man and which became much worse over a relatively short period of time. Fortunately, he was admitted to hospital for corrective surgery quite quickly, had the op and was discharged from hospital the next day. When I called him that afternoon to find out how he was doing, I caught him just as he was leaving the house to go for a walk (the day after his op!) and he was able to resume his running and coaching within a very short space of time.

I believe that his remarkably rapid recovery was due to the fact that he is extremely fit and healthy for his age. The fact that he also keeps himself mentally agile, means that no-one ever believes him when he tells them that he is 72 and he could easily pass for a man 10 or 15 years younger than he actually is.

Question: What do George W Bush, Bill Clinton, Cher, Donald Trump, Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton have in common?

Answer: They all turn 60 years of age in 2006.

Can you imagine any of them settling down to a traditional retirement? Can you imagine any of them giving up their work and putting themselves out to pasture? Just enjoying the occasional game of golf or game of cards with their friends at the over-60’s club?

Retirement is changing. The type of retirement that their parents enjoyed is no longer enough for the baby boomer generation. Today’s retirees are younger, richer, fitter, healthier and better educated than previous generations of retirees. They also have much higher expectations.

The aim of this blog is to help you get the vital, healthy, prosperous, productive and fulfilling retirement that you really want (and deserve). Please call back soon to find out what's on offer.