The Joy of Retirement: Finding Happiness, Freedom, and the Life You've Always Wanted

289 Pages·2008·0.94 MB·English

by  David C. Borchard

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More Advance Praise for
The Joy of Retirement
“Once the mindless myths associated with aging are dispelled, people of tra-
ditional retirement age must learn to identify the purpose they can pursue with
a passion. With the help of books like The Joy of Retirement, our rapidly aging
population can renew their motivation to systematically envision where mean-
ing lies in a capstone calling.”
—Helen L. Harkness, author, Best Jobs for the Future,
The Career Chase, Don’t Stop the Career Clock,
and Capitalizing on Career Chaos
“Borchard and Donohoe have put together a comprehensive yet readable and
truly helpful planning guide for anyone considering retirement.”
—John P. Springett, retired Department of Defense senior executive
“I’ve just retired after 45 years, so The Joy of Retirementcould not be more
perfectly timed. David Borchard and Patricia Donohoe offer expert coun-
seling and spiritual advice (combined with a dose of common sense) to those
of us finding our way in the sometimes frightening world of life after paid
employment.”
—Mike Bowler, retired education editor, The Baltimore Sun
“With a rare combination of scholarship, wit, and common sense, David
Borchard has pierced through the misconceptions about this phase of life and
reminded us that retirement is not an end, but rather a new beginning—an
opportunity for growth, creativity, and the discovery of one’s authentic self.”
—George McHenry, ex-lawyer turned artist
“I have retired after a long career in international health consulting, and I am
now both a faculty choral director and a student going for my bachelor’s
degree in music. The Joy of Retirement effectively leads prospective retirees
through the process I went through myself. Borchard’s tools present the kind
of challenges one needs to face at this transition point and provide readers
with actual data so they don’t have to rely on unreliable hunches and intuition.
His hundreds of personal stories provide wonderful role models for going in
whatever direction a person wishes to go.”
—Robert S. Northrup, M.D.
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T J R
HE OY OF ETIREMENT
Finding Happiness, Freedom,
and the Life You’ve Always Wanted
David C. Borchard
with Patricia A. Donohoe
American Management Association
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understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal,
accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert
assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person
should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Borchard, David C.
The joy of retirement : finding happiness, freedom, and the life you’ve
always wanted / David C. Borchard with Patricia A. Donohoe.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8144-8056-4 (pbk.)
1. Retirement—United States. 2. Retirement—United States—Planning.
3. Retirees—United States—Life skills guides. I. Donohoe, Patricia A.
II. Title.
HQ1063.2.U6B67 2008
646.7'90973—dc22
2007052951
© 2008 David C. Borchard
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of AMACOM, a division of American Management Association,
1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
Printing number
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Chapter 1: Reinventing Your Life at Fifty-Plus 1
Chapter 2: Life Transitions: Endings and Beginnings 23
Chapter 3: Imagination and the Next Season of Your Life 47
Chapter 4: The Life Themes Profiler: Developing Themes
for a New Life 63
Chapter 5: Self-Liberation: Transcending Old Roles 94
Chapter 6: Establishing Your Criteria for Fulfillment 115
Chapter 7: Connecting Your Talents to Interests 141
Chapter 8: Relating and Behaving Differently as a Senior 167
Chapter 9: Coming Home: Relocating to the Good Life 201
Chapter 10: Sustaining Vitality: Managing Your Changing
Self in a Changing World 222
Conclusion: Authoring Your Life 253
References 261
Index 265
About the Authors 271
v
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Preface
if you’re in the fifty-plus stage of life,
what’s your reaction to
being referred to as a “senior”? Some of my clients shudder at the
word and severely object to such a label. Personally, I like the idea of
being a senior. Do you remember your high school and college days
when you couldn’t wait to achieve the lofty status of senior? When you
became a senior, then you probably thought you’d arrived and that you
were now mature, experienced, and wise. You might have even looked
down on the underclassmen.
In corporate life, folks work hard to become a senior partner, sen-
ior advisor, or senior executive. In ministry, pastors differentiate their
status as senior from those who are associates or assistants. Why is it
that when we reach a senior status in life, say about fifty-five or so, that
we then are reluctant to acknowledge our graduation into this new sta-
tus, which once was so desirable? Could it be that at fifty-plus we as-
sociate the word seniorwith the pejorative label of being “old”?
Old, however, is an old concept when it comes to the new human
lifespan. Age is not so much a matter of chronology as it is of health
and mindset. Satchel Paige, a colorful character from the sports world
and possibly the greatest baseball pitcher of all times, once said, “Ag-
ing is a matter of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.”
Today seniors are generally healthier, longer-lived, and more active
than ever before. In this new world, I suggest we consider achieving fifty-
plus status as enviable. In Asia, you’d be revered. So why not enjoy all the
hard-won freedom and wisdom that comes with this time in our lives?
◆ What We Want in Senior Life
As a career management coach and counselor, I’ve had the opportu-
nity to work with hundreds of clients over the past 30 years, mostly
vii
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viii PREFACE
ranging in age from 20 to 50. In recent years, however, I’ve been see-
ing growing numbers of individuals in the fifty-plus stage of life. They
want help with reinventing their lives. Some of these individuals want
to continue working, but in some new capacity or another; some want
to engage in full-time hobbies; some want to volunteer; and many just
say they don’t know what they want.
Yet I’ve found that there are two things almost all of them are seek-
ing. First, they clearly want more freedom to manage their lives and to
be more autonomous. More or less, many of them say, “I’ve spent my
time in the trenches. Now I’m looking forward to doing what I want
rather than what is wanted of me.” One of my clients in the process of
planning his retirement said, “I feel like an adolescent again—free and
ready for new things.”
A second, and not quite so obvious, aspiration my clients have is to
become more fully who they are. It seems that so many of us in the first
half of life have focused on being what others wanted of us, what our
professions required, what our corporate identity demanded, what
made our parents happy, or what we thought we needed to be in order
to fit in and to make it in life and work.
As we age, however, a shift tends to occur. We stop being so con-
cerned about how others see us and become much more interested in
being and becoming our “natural selves.” I call this the self-realization
inclination,and it’s pretty much a bug that most of us get in the fifty-
plus years. I hear clients refer to this aspiration in a number of differ-
ent ways. Some talk of their desire to “be and do what I want,” some
talk of the “freedom to be me,” and some say things like, “I’m looking
forward to switching from being Mr. Corporate Guy or Ms. Career
Professional to figuring out and being who I really am.” The process of
letting go and rediscovering or uncovering who you are is one of the
wonderful benefits of graduating to the status of full-fledged senior.
◆ How This Book Can Help
It’s one thing to harbor the aspirations of self and life reinvention, but
how do you actually achieve them? That’s a question I hear often from
my fifty-plus clients. For many years I was working with one adult at
a time in this process, but as the demand grew I realized the need to
serve a bigger audience. For that reason, I developed a course that I’ve
been conducting at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., over the past
several years. The course has become quite popular, and individuals
outside of the organization often ask me if they can attend.
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PREFACE ix
Unfortunately, it’s a service available only for employees. Addi-
tionally, a number of executives would like the service but are un-
willing to take the course out of concern that others would see them
there and get a wrong impression. Senior executives don’t want oth-
ers to think they are jumping ship, but they do want and need to plan
for a different kind of future—one minus an executive title. While I
occasionally deliver the course in other settings, those settings also
are geared to a limited audience. Not everyone who might like access
to a course of this nature or to individual coaching can afford it. Oth-
ers shy away from what they might consider as “needing help with
their life.”
It’s for these reasons that I have developed this book. My hope is
that it will serve as a self-guided process for individuals looking to
find new meaning and purpose in their lives as seniors. I have spent
years—decades, really—developing a process to help those who
want to get a bigger bang out of their senior years in terms of per-
sonal freedom and self-realization. If you are thinking of senior life
as retirement and a time just for hanging out, this book may not be
for you. But, if you are one of the many who see the fifty-plus years
as the “Gateway to Freedom” and are excited about making the
second half of life the best yet, read on. This book was developed
for you.
The Joy of Retirement presents mind- and vision-expanding per-
spectives for creating a lifestyle for your senior years that is meaning-
ful, enjoyable, and rejuvenating. The book features process, content,
and assessment tools that have helped hundreds of fifty-plussers rein-
vent themselves and create fulfilling retirement lifestyles. The book
evolved from my 30 years of career coaching and counseling experi-
ences with adults, and, I hope, contains a large measure of the expert-
ise and wisdom I’ve gained from working with so many individuals
from so many different backgrounds.
I’ve designed a structured approach for authoring a new chapter of
your life because I’ve found that people who are in transition and in a
quandary about their future appreciate having a step-by-step approach.
They want to see a path through the woods. I therefore designed the
book as an orderly process for helping you resolve six of the major life
issues that confront most in our fifty-plus years:
1. What do I really want (vision)?
2. Who am I, and who am I becoming (identity)?