THE LIFE THEMES PROFILER: DEVELOPING THEMES FOR A NEW LIFE
“In seeing my Life Themes Profiler results I realized that I have been too security conscious in my career. It’s clear to me now that I am a ‘New Work Venturer’ and that I want to take more risks and become more entrepreneurial in my future.”
—A 50-YEAR-OLD PROFESSIONAL CONSIDERING THE IMPLICATIONS OF HER ASSESSMENT RESULTS
“This has forced me to change my thinking about the future. I had planned to return to the company as a full-time consultant after retiring. But now I can see it’s time for me to better balance my life with some new and interesting part-time work and an enjoyable hobby.”
—A 62-YEAR-OLD MALE RETHINKING HIS RETIREMENT PLANS AS A RESULT OF HIS LIFE THEMES PROFILER PROFILE
“The results of our Life Themes Profiler assessments brought home the realization that we needed to do some communicating and accommodating about our assumptions for retirement if our relationship was going to endure.”
—A COUPLE REVIEWING THEIR ASSESSMENT RESULTS RECEIVED IN A RETIREMENT PLANNING WORKSHOP
Developing the Core Themes for Your New LifeThe previous chapter emphasized reinventing your future through creating thinking. This chapter provides an assessment activity to help you envision the kind of a future suited to your needs and interests.
Recreating a new life involves four phases:
1. Envisioning the nature of the kind of future you desire. Beginning a new life journey starts with self-knowledge, which involves clarifying what it is that energizes you and generating a mental picture of what the ideal would look like.
2. Articulating that picture into the written word. It is difficult to achieve something you are unable to clearly articulate.
3. Claiming your passion once you are clear about what it is. That means both knowing and being able to say this is what I will do and/or who I will be.
4. Developing a plan or a map for getting where you want to go and for achieving who you want to be. The task of creating your own map can be challenging. It involves a process of life/work strategizing, creative problem solving, and planning. In that regard, you are more likely to develop such a life map intuitively through creative visioning than from careful analysis and detailed planning.
The fourth phase is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 9. For now, take the following assessment, the Life Themes Profiler, for help in addressing the first three phases of the life reinventing process*. We shall further address the third phase in the following chapters.
Directions
Review each of the 20 items in the assessment and use the following rating scale to assess how true each statement is for you at this stage of your life.
Write the number you have selected as your rating for each of the 20 items in the open boxes, as shown in the following example:
What are your intentions for the next chapter of your life?
1. I want to continue working but am looking to make a career switch or start my own business. 8
2. I intend to continue in my work full-time and to be fully productive for many more years. 1
When you have completed all 20 items, tally up your scores in each of the four columns (A, B, C, and D).
What are your intentions for the next chapter of your life?
1. I want to continue working but am looking to make a career switch or start my own business.
2. I intend to continue in my work full time and to be fully productive for many more years.
3. I expect to quit working soon to enjoy a more stress-free, relaxing and leisure-filled life.
4. I’m ready for an employment-free lifestyle and intend to challenge myself in new ways.
5. There are still many things I want to do and achieve in work before retiring.
What are your intentions for the next chapter of your life?
6. I would enjoy undertaking an entirely new work-related venture at this stage of life.
7. I can’t wait to retire and enjoy a freer life where I have the time to enjoy leisure activities.
8. I’m an adventurous sort who is ready for a new life of mind-expanding challenges.
9. Achievement in my work and career continues to be a primary motivator in my life.
10. I don’t enjoy my work and want to move on to a more challenging work or career situation.
11. I’m tired of a life dominated by work and I’m ready to settle into a comfortable retirement.
12. I plan to retire and pursue my passion for adventure and expanding my frontiers.
13. Having absolutely no commitments and abundant free time greatly appeals to me.
14. I’m at the peak of productivity in my career and will remain working for many more years.
15. I look forward to the freedom to explore new avenues and pursue my passions in leisure life.
What are your intentions for the next chapter of your life?
16. I want to move on to a new work situation better suited to my talents and interests.
17. If money were no obstacle, I would have retired a long time ago to enjoy a life of leisure.
18. I feel a strong urge to stop working and move on to some engaging new life ventures.
19. I enjoy working and being productive and can’t imagine life without a work-focused structure.
20. I’m sure to feel regret unless I find or create a more satisfying new work situation.
Total scores for Column A, B, C, and D ______________________
Plot your total scores from columns A, B, C, and D along the corresponding axis of Figure 4-1. After plotting your scores, connect all four of your marked scores to obtain a visual representation of your preferences. Note in which quadrant(s) your scores are highest and lowest for insights as to what themes hold the most promise for the next chapter of your life.
FIGURE 4-1. PICTURING THE THEMES OF YOUR NEXT LIFE CHAPTER.
Visualizing Your Lifestyle OptionsThe Life Themes Profiler visually represents four basic considerations that retirement planners must address. One of these has to do with how much time, if any, will be devoted to continuing in work, versus how much leisure life one is ready and able to enjoy. There is, however, a less obvious decision to be made as we prepare to live longer, healthier, and more active lives than any previous generation in human history. This has to do with the choice of a stable and predictable lifestyle versus one of change and adventure. As you can see from Figure 4-2, these considerations have been placed at the opposite ends of two continuums. These continuums, in turn, form a four-quadrant model for help in designing your life in the senior years. The four quadrants developed in this model are designated with names characterizing important thematic lifestyle orientations.
It is important to note here that this model represents a dynamic process rather than a static situation. Over time, an individual’s lifestyle preference may shift from one theme to another as motivations respond to changing circumstances. So, for example, having spent many years in a career that consumed a major portion of your enegies, you might feel inclined to relax and take life easy as a Sailor-Gardener. After some time enjoying this interlude, however, you may begin to grow a bit restless and look for some kind of activity to reengage your mind or respond to a new call to adventure. After doing some exploring and thinking about this, you might decide, as did a retired economist client of mine, to take some anthropology courses at a nearby university. While engaged in these courses, you might elect to accompany a professor on an archeological dig involved in researching the ruins of an ancient Anasazi civilization. This activity might engage you in a joint research project with the professor, which in turn leads to writing an article together. Drawing on your professional knowledge of economics, your contribution in the article might be to flesh out the economics of the Anasazi civilization as it relates to the social, governing, and demographic picture of that once-great society. Such an experience might then lead to continued research and teaching a course at a university in your newly uncovered passion. The progression in this example, based on an actual case, would involve transitioning from Gray Eminence to a period of relaxing leisure as Sailor-Gardener, followed by a regenerated lifestyle as Seeker-Explorer. Later, you might add features of a New Work Venturer to the mix.
FIGURE 4-2. LIFE THEMES PROFILER.
A high score in this style indicates that your career, or some aspect of it, remains a prime motivator, and you are not yet ready for retirement. You probably enjoy your work and may want to continue doing that, or something very similar, for the foreseeable future. People in the mature stages of their career who identify with the Gray Eminence theme are often motivated by a variety of factors. These may include a continuing need for power and status, leveraging their knowledge and experience, creating their legacy, mentoring younger staff, making a contribution to their professional field, serving their clients or organizations, finalizing long-sought career goals, or moving into senior positions or roles within their organization or profession where they can continue to contribute and exercise influence.
If the Gray Eminence category fits your aspirations, here are some options to consider for energizing the next chapter of your life:
• Take on a mentoring role with promising younger staff or associates.
• Determine what legacy you wish to establish and develop plans to create it.
• Transition into a senior advisory capacity with your current organization or as a consultant in your field of expertise.
• Assume a senior position or role within your organization or move to another organization where your knowledge and experience are valued and where you may have greater opportunity to capitalize on them.
• Develop a proposal for a needed initiative of interest to you and assume leadership of the project.
• Market yourself to assume a prominent role in a project or program of special interest to you or assume leadership of a project that needs revitalization.
• Take on a position of leadership within a professional association relevant to your profession or related field of interest.
• Take a retirement pension but continue to work with your organization or similar organization in a consulting capacity.
• Establish a consulting practice, either as a freelancer or in partnership with like-minded individuals or with an established consulting practice.
• Define and market yourself as an interim leader in your field of expertise for organizations in transition.
• Work with a temporary agency that provides executives and/or professional expertise to organizations with needs for such services. (Do a Google search for executive and professional agencies specializing in interim placements in organizations for your areas of specialty.)
Stephen Transitions to Consulting Stephen enjoyed his work and was happy in his profession, but had grown weary of the routine and the stresses he was feeling about certain changes taking place within his organization. He yearned for a lifestyle in which he could operate more autonomously and have greater control over his own schedule. After mulling over his situation and discussing his options and their possible consequences with trusted friends and others, Stephen decided to retire. But he resolved to continue in his profession by serving as a consultant. This proved to be a good course of action for him, as his consulting business has prospered.
Looking back at the transition from full-time employment to consulting, Stephen recalled that it was strange walking out of the organization one day, after so many years of full-time employment, and returning the next as a consultant. He regrets now that he didn’t work harder early on to extend his consulting business beyond his former employing agency, especially since changes in management have resulted in dramatically reducing his contracting days. He has been concentrating on extending his business connections recently and finds this to be interesting but challenging. He recommends that anyone planning to start a consulting practice establish a network of social and professional associates and schedule regular meetings with them. He learned through experience in setting up his practice that consulting can be isolating and lonely without such a network.
Retirement: Ready or Not Michael had been with his organization long enough to be eligible for an early retirement with a pension that would enable him to live fairly comfortably, albeit carefully. Because he was feeling highly conflicted about whether or not to retire, he sought career coaching assistance. The nature of his conflict was that he enjoyed much of his work and was still a few years away from full retirement eligibility. But his work was causing him a great deal of stress. The source of his anxieties related to the nature of his work, which involved corporate-wide research projects. His responsibilities often engaged him in conflict with high-level executives who had big stakes in the outcomes of his work. The stress of this, sufficient enough for him to seek psychiatric help, was such that he was seriously considering jumping ship to escape the constant pressure. There was, however, one overriding barrier causing him to hesitate in this decision. He was having an exceedingly difficult time determining what he would do if he chose early retirement.
For help with this decision, he took a number of assessments, including the Life Themes Profiler. These results showed him equally distributed between Gray Eminence and Sailor-Gardener. This helped him appreciate that the kinds of work activities he was engaged with were challenging and meaningful, and well used his top strengths. With that realization, he discussed several possible options with his manager, from full retirement to consulting and part-time work.
Eventually, he decided to continue working full time for as long as he was enjoying his work and feeling that he was making worthwhile contributions. To manage the work-related stress he had been experiencing, he resolved to always take all of his vacation time to do fun things with his wife and family and also to better balance his life with enjoyable leisure activities. In opting for this course of action he discovered an added benefit. Knowing that he could retire whenever he chose, without worrying about his financial situation, provided a sense of stress-reducing comfort. As he put it with a sly grin, “After all, what’s the worst they can do—fire me?”
Scoring high on this style means you are ready for change, but not for retirement! If this is you, you are highly motivated by a new work-related undertaking, such as creating your own business, initiating a new product or project, trying out an organizational reassignment, beginning a new career, or moving on to a new work situation.
If New Work Venturer is the right direction for the next chapter of your life, here are some things you might consider:
• Create your own business. A good reference is Innovative Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker.
• Transition into a totally new and challenging career. For help in this you might want to engage the services of a career coach or counselor.
• Find a new work challenge that puts your talents and potential to the full test. A good reference for finding work to suit your talent is Career One Stop at www.careeronestop.org (click on “Explore Careers”).
• Develop a proposal and seek funding for a project you care deeply about.
• Take on a challenging assignment, something you have never done.
• Seek an exchange assignment with a firm where you would engage in different kinds of work activities. For ideas on this topic, try a Google search for secondment.
• Work with or start your own nongovernmental agency. Do a Google search for NGO.
• Join the Peace Corps or similar types of organizations, such as AmeriCorps (www.americorps.org), Vista (www.friendsofvista.org), Cross Cultural Solutions (www.crossculuralsolutions.org), or Earth Watch Institute (www.earthwatch.org).
• Return to college to obtain a degree or certificate to initiate a career in a new area such as nursing, architectural landscape, French pastry chef, bike mechanic, massage therapist, bar tender, vintner, or organic farmer.
• Find a niche to transfer a special knowledge, a natural talent or a unique personality asset into a new career direction such as a Web designer for small businesses in the area, tour guide for an attraction for which you have a special affinity, sportscaster for local baseball team, scoutmaster, or public official. An excellent reference for ideas and a process to translate deep personal interests into a resume-style marketing document is my book Will the Real You Please Stand Up: Find Passion in Your Life and Work (SterlingHouse Books, 2006).
Project Leader Becomes Bed-and-Breakfast Network Manager “I wanted to help establish a network of low-cost, family-run bed-and-breakfast (B & B) facilities in Peru,” says Nada. “Poor countries often lack short-term lodging facilities for vacationers or local small-business travelers seeking low-cost accommodations.” Nada believes the benefits for establishing such a network are helping the local economy at the grassroots level, enhancing the role of women (who will be the local B & B managers), and helping foster important cultural understanding between tourist visitors and Peruvian hosts.
Nada enjoyed her corporate career, but changes in the leadership structure and mission direction disturbed her greatly. In discussing her reactions to these changes with her manager, they came to a mutual agreement that the time had come for a parting of the ways. On that basis, Nada accepted a separation package that included a lump-sum payment for her many years of excellent service.
Nada, to attain the expertise necessary for her new endeavor, embarked on an ambitious training program. The first stage consisted of studying the applicable endeavors existing in Japan, France, and the Czech Republic. She stayed in B & B facilities in these countries to learn first-hand how networked systems were developed and operated, what kind of training and other assistance they received through their network affiliation, what kind of problems to anticipate, and how B & B services were marketed.
In the second phase of her self-directed training, she traveled into the Peruvian countryside to meet with families to identify areas where B & B facilities might be created and what kinds of help would be needed to develop these facilities. In the third phase of her training she attended short, formal executive training courses relevant to the task of creating and running a B & B network along with informal courses in NGO management.
With this training under her belt, Nada returned to Peru, the country of her birth after 26 years as a corporate executive in the United States. There she began dealing with endless problems and difficulties for establishing a Peruvian B & B chain. These included locating feasible sites with families interested in and capable of operating them, training new B & B owners in all aspects of managing these facilities, interacting with foreign tourists, and creating a supportive NGO structure in a country whose infrastructure had been devastated by years of internecine warfare. But her most difficult challenge was dealing with the many officials and the cumbersome state apparatus that creating this ambitious venture entailed.
Nada was motivated in this venture by the B & B networks that were established in Japan and France after WWII. But there were better infrastructures existing in those countries than those currently existing in Peru. Although the scale of this task has been daunting and the problems extremely frustrating, Nada remains hopeful that this venture will ultimately turn out as successful in Peru as earlier prototypes in postwar Japan and France became. But whether or not the outcome is fully successful, she is highly motivated in a meaningful endeavor and takes comfort in the knowledge that she has already taken important steps in making a difference in the lives of many individuals.
From Government Bureaucrat to Architectural Photographer Jason retired after a career as an agronomist and was ready for something completely different. At the age of 61, he elected to pursue a newly discovered passion, which he affectionately referred to as “the photography bug.” “I like things that sit still, giving me the ability to be careful and deliberate,” says Jason about his decision to focus on architectural photography. His interest in photography developed through courses he had enrolled in at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. It was there that he had become particularly intrigued with architectural photography. While still employed with his organization, he was able to further his growing interest in his new hobby by joining a local camera club. The photography bug became so pervasive, however, that he decided to make it his work rather than his hobby.
Jason decided to launch his new career by taking courses from masters in the profession. These consisted of a number of intensive educational development programs at places like the Corcoran School of Art, The Washington School of Photography, Anderson Ranch Art Center in Colorado, and the International Center of Photography. After completing this training, Jason was able to create a niche market—taking photographs of buildings for architects, real estate agents, and building contractors. His business soon developed through word of-mouth. “Someone sees a picture they like,” says Jason, and they end up hiring you to take some for them, and then they tell someone else about you.”
Apparently, enough people have liked Jason’s work to enable him to be about as busy as he wants. Of course, he acknowledges, you have to keep pace with the changes going on within the field—referring to the digital technology revolutionizing photography. To stay competitive, he has to wisely invest time and money in professional development as an ongoing process.
Reflecting on his transition from bureaucrat to photographer, Jason found that there are up and down days. He reports that about six months after deciding to take an early retirement, “It hit me pretty hard. I woke up one morning wondering, what have I done, and will I ever make it as a photographer?” His advice to anyone going through such a transition is to create a good support group early on and use it for ideas, contacts, planning, and support in the down days, and to share the good news in the good ones.
From Administrative Assistant to Ballroom Dance Trainer Lucile had been competing for years in the ballroom dance scene when she opted to take an early retirement from her administrative assistance position to do what, as she puts it, “lights up my mind and fills my heart with joy.” She decided the time had come to take a shot at making a living in her passion for ballroom dancing. She would do that by training those with a bug for dancing in the ins and outs of ballroom dance. Her vision included not only training the growing legions of amateur ballroom dancers, but to train Olympic dancers for this new international sport.
Although this rather dramatic change in Lucile’s career direction happened quickly, her vision for it had been evolving over several years. She loved to dance and would drag her husband off all over the country to dance competitions, where she and a dance partner were frequent winners. Her husband, incidentally, did not dance, but was supportive of her passion for dance and enjoyed watching her come alive with the tango, the rumba, and the cha-cha-cha. Lucy had been saving money for this venture for years, knowing that starting a dance studio would require a substantial stash. To acquire the additional training she thought would be needed for her new vocation, she enrolled in a ballroom dance program in London, which is apparently a hotbed for this sort of thing.
The last I heard from Lucile was that she was doing well in her new venture. Ballroom dancing has become vogue in recent years, and apparently there are scores of would-be dancers willing to pay well to have a ball on the dance-room floor, and in the process, stay trim, look great and feel young. Ballroom dancing, anyone?
Scoring high in this theme suggests you are ready to stop working but not to retire in any traditional sense. You have, no doubt, been dreaming of doing something different, something challenging, and maybe even something associated with risk, adventure, and proving yourself in new ways and in new settings. Primary motivations for people in this category include things like testing themselves in nonwork situations, going all out in some demanding undertaking, learning something new and fascinating, achieving some new skill in a nonwork interest, exploring exotic places, pursuing a heart-felt passion or learning firsthand about unfamiliar cultures. Seeker-Explorer, as a metaphor, can assume a wide variety of forms—some highly competitive, others more exploratory in nature. The exploratory theme may involve both an inner- and outer-world focus. An inner focus could be something like achieving mastery in yoga, meditation, Tai Chi, or other type of spiritual practice. An outer-world focus might involve something like studying astronomy, tracing the family history, taking up competitive sailing, or joining walking expeditions through historical sites of Eurasia.
As a Seeker-Explorer, consider activities such as these:
• Play competitive chess, bridge, golf, billiards (pool), clay pigeon shooting, tennis, auto racing, or sailing. (Most sports of these kinds have league-sponsored activities, and local chapters such as The National Sporting Clays Association: www.mynsca.com and the Women’s Professional Billiard Association: www.wpba.com.) Note: The operative word here is competitive. Playing a game or participating in a sport just for the fun of it would not be enough for a Seeker-Explorer. For self-fulfillment, Seeker-Explorers need to engage their skills, knowledge, and wits against challenging competition.
• Try physical challenges such as mountain climbing, cross-country biking, or skiing, trekking in new and interesting places.
• Move to a new country to master the language, culture, and history.
• Engage in demanding volunteer work in a cause you feel passionate about, such as Habitat for Humanity, Red Cross Emergency work, hospice care, or school mediation work. (Doing a Google search for “Volunteer Opportunities” brings up thousands of organizations engaged in doing good work in the planet. You are bound to find several volunteer opportunities associated with a heart-felt cause.)
• Pursue advanced education in a subject area of great interest such as psychology, theology, mythology, metaphysics, history, art, geology, anthropology, dance, music, or historic preservation. Check the catalog of available courses at a conveniently located college or university near you for available offerings. The Internet is another source of rich educational offerings with programs available from leading institutions all over the world. Want to learn Chinese? How about taking an online course from Beijing University (www.educasian.com)?
• Assume a responsible, unpaid position with a professional association, spiritual, or religious institution or community service organization associated with a deeply felt personal passion. For a listing of thousands of professional associations, visit www.jobweb.com/Career_Development/prof_assoc.htm.
• Acquire a new skill or develop a latent talent and offer it as a free service to individuals and/or organizations that might benefit from your contribution. Try tutoring disadvantaged children, volunteering as a Big Brother or Sister, taking voice lessons and starring in local productions, acquiring a paralegal certificate and assisting older citizens with legal matters, or volunteering with the Small Business Association to provide guidance to individuals starting their own business.
• Venture forth and explore places you have never been, becoming acquainted with new people, cultures, and environmental wonders.
• Develop into a martial arts master, acquire schooling in a demanding spiritual discipline, master yoga and teach it, develop into a marathon walker and advocate the benefits of exercise, obtain credentials in speech communications and or coach with a local Toastmasters chapter.
• Master a craft such as furniture making, wood carving, doll making, home repair, glass blowing, violin crafting, cello playing, lapidary (jewelry making), quilting, stained glass, classic car restoration, water color, garden sculptures, piano, and so on.
Manager Becomes Bush Pilot Luis retired after a long and rewarding career, but felt he was too young and energetic and restless for an idle lifestyle. However, he was clear that he relished his autonomy and never again wanted to be employed. The time had come to undertake something new and adventurous. But what, he wondered, could he do that would keep him active, engaging him in something fun and worthwhile?
In considering a number of possibilities, Luis decided to pursue something that had long intrigued him but he’d not previously been able to work into his schedule. He decided to obtain a pilot’s license and purchase his own airplane. Today, or at least at the time of this writing, Luis is a bush pilot, flying needed medical supplies into remote areas of the developing world and flying out individuals needing medical attention from areas where such services are unavailable. He thoroughly enjoys his bush pilot/aviator lifestyle and relishes feeling helpful to others in need.
HR Manager Becomes Auto Racer Peter, a long-time human resource manager with a large firm, was a Porsche owner and loved to cruise the open roads in his high-performing machine. When he discovered that there was a small group of similar-minded sport-car enthusiasts, Peter linked up with them for long weekend excursions whenever he was able. These occasional pleasure trips made him aware of a growing desire beyond occasional weekend jaunts. Eventually, the yearning became too compelling to resist. He became obsessed with auto racing. For years, he had been saving to purchase a racing Porsche. Now, he decided was time, while he is still young and healthy enough to take up racing. That led him to take an early retirement, buy the car of his dreams, and join a racing association.
When I last heard from him, he had yet to win a single race, although he had come close on more than one occasion. Those close calls were inspiring enough, he admitted, to generate a vision of frequently walking away with the big silver winner’s cup. When he achieves that dream, his racing yearnings will have been fulfilled. At that point, too old any longer to take the racetrack turns at 160 miles per hour, he will always be able to take great pleasure in reliving the heart-throbbing, adrenaline-pumping, engine-roaring, dust-flying days of racing in the bucket seat of his beloved Porsche.
Mark Expands His Horizons Many aspects of the Seeker-Explorer theme involve competition of one sort or another. There are also other motivators, however, that influence the choices and actions of individuals of the Seeker-Explorer persuasion. Mark is a case in point. Having taken one of the “What’s Next” workshops I deliver for retirement planners, Mark told me that through this process he came to realize he was a Seeker-Explorer. But he wanted me to know that he would definitely not be climbing any mountains, nor engaging in any such type of physical or competitive endeavor. Instead, what motivated him was a highly active mind and relentless curiosity. This was an inner drive that manifested in a seemingly insatiable desire to explore as much of the world as his time and resources allowed. One way in which he intended to pursue his quest for expanded horizons was to move with his wife Maria, a highly spirited Latino, to a country he had never visited. Mark informed me he was anxious to begin this new adventure and that he intended to undertake this as a mind-expanding challenge by mastering the language, culture, and history of their new home.
About two years after Mark and Maria moved to their new country, I had the opportunity to talk with Maria. She informed me that in fact Mark was in all ways an avid Seeker-Explorer. He was a tireless explorer, she informed me, who was constantly traveling and on the go. His curiosity had been driving him relentlessly. Maria shared that when they take off on frequent excursions to places like Thailand or South Africa she, as a Sailor-Gardener, was perfectly content to relax, shop a little, take in some of the sites, enjoy the beach, or read a good book. With Mark, however, it is a different matter. He would employ a local fisherman to take him exploring to remote islands or engage a helicopter pilot to fly him around volcanoes. According to Maria, Mark never seemed to tire of his venturesome, explorative ways. His idea of relaxation would be something like going on safari in Kenya.
Sara Creates Hope for the Poor Sara had worked long and hard all of her adult life in administrative support positions as a way of providing for herself and her family. During her working years she had dreamed of one day finding a way to provide opportunities for women and children living in poverty. Searching for ways that she might accomplish this objective, she often used her vacation time to travel in the developing world. On one of these occasions, while visiting a poverty-ridden area in Brazil, two things struck her. One was the beautiful craftwork that many women there produced as a way of generating some income and as a diversion from their oppressive living conditions. Another was the huge number of children idly sitting around watching TV in shacks so decrepit that could barely hold up a TV antenna. In reflecting upon these conditions, Sara developed a vision for how she wanted to implement her dream.
A few years after this moving experience, with the support of a retirement pension, she put her plan into action. The first step was to buy a farm in the country near the poverty-stricken city that inspired her vision. Her farm is located in an area that was once heavily forested but had been stripped bare for farmland in an environmentally damaging venture. For help in financing and supporting her project Sara created a nongovernmental organization (NGO).
She has gone on to renovate “lovely old buildings” in preparation for stage two of the project, which involves providing poor women of the city with a place where they can make and sell crafts through her NGO affiliations. The second phase of her project involves getting children from the city onto the farm to involve them in replanting the forest. Sara intends to infuse these children with a love of trees and nature. Her vision is that as the project evolves, the children will grow with the trees and learn effective forestry practices, along with skills for managing the farm. Sara’s vision for this project vitalizes her in a way she has never before experienced. She is a vivid example of how pursuing a passionate dream can fully engage one’s energy and enthusiasm for living.
Sailor-Gardeners are individuals who see retirement as a means for enjoying a quieter, more relaxed lifestyle. They believe it’s time to slow down and take things easier, to “stop and smell the roses.” Individuals scoring high in this theme often report that they have become stressed, burned-out, bored, or simply tired of their work and want to rejuvenate, have some fun, and take better care of themselves.
If Sailor-Gardener is the right direction for your next chapter of life, here are some actions to consider:
• Define your lifestyle needs and search for a location that meets your list of personal preferences. For this you may find Chapter 9 on finding your ideal location to be of special interest.
• Develop new acquaintances with others who share your values and interests.
• Reconnect with family and friends.
• Begin a healthy life-maintenance regime (exercise, diet, and spiritual life).
• Find or engage in hobbies and leisure interests that you enjoy.
• Become involved with a club (social, professional, health, etc.), community group, and/or a church/synagogue/mosque.
• Spend time with people you admire and wish to learn from and become better acquainted with them.
• Schedule fun/learning adventures to places that are romantic, historic, quaint, beautiful, remote, and so on.
• Plant a garden and watch it grow, landscape your backyard, and invite friends and casual acquaintances over to enjoy your koifilled pond.
• Write poetry for your own enjoyment or that of your grandchildren.
• Take up walking on a regular basis with friends and neighbors.
• Take a culinary course in a particular cuisine and create splendid dinner parties.
• Study a subject that interests you, such as Jungian psychology, the Vikings, ornithology, Nobel Prize winners, Japanese culture, art history, the rise and fall of Sparta, and so on.
• Play Web-based games like pool, checkers, and chess live with grandkids and/or cyber-friends from around the world on Netscape games.
Maria Creates a Garden Prior to retiring, Maria had spent her work years serving others. She didn’t dislike this work, but it wasn’t her passion, either. But now, supported by a retirement pension, she was excited about fully engaging in her passions—riding her motorcycle, tending her roses, and quilting.
Maria’s life-long friend had landscaped a magnificent garden. For years, Mira had been admiring that garden, spending time enjoying it, dreaming about it, and envisioning creating a garden of her own. In planning for the next chapter of her life, she had been avidly reading landscaping books, visiting garden sites, and envisioning the kind of a garden she might wish to create. The process of creating and nurturing a garden answered a deep-seated need for Mira to work with her hands and create a beautiful setting in nature.
Johan Makes Furniture Johan always loved working with wood. After retiring, he studied the fine art of furniture making. Now he can easily spend days on end in this labor of love. Although he has received offers to buy the fruits of his labors, he has resisted turning his hobby into a business because he doesn’t want it to take on the pressure of work.
Clark Becomes a Sportsman Clark is a crack marksman in the skeet shooter club. He is also a golfer and a fly fisherman. Although he doesn’t hunt, he does enjoy shooting and is a member of a local club, where he bangs away during the week when most club members are at work. Although he is not an avid golfer, he enjoys playing a round with a congenial group of other retirees and frequently participates in tournaments at his club. You may also find him with his fly rod and homemade flies at a local trout stream, and he casts off a couple of times a year with a group of friends to the famous trout streams of Montana and the Delaware River in New Jersey. To fill out his days, he is an active member of Rotary and learns Spanish at the local college. He also meets once a week with a small group at the local bistro to practice Spanish and develop travel plans to Spanish-speaking countries.
The Shape of Things to ComeNow that you have completed your Life Theme Profile, step back and take a look at it to see what this might suggest in devising a direction for the next chapter of your life. Does your profile show a strong presence in just one area, or are you double-, triple-, or quadruple-theme interested at this juncture of life?
Figure 4-3 shows a few of these multiple interest profiles.
Developing a vision to guide your life course is a simpler matter for someone with a single dominant theme on the Life Themes Profiler than for those with multiple dominant themes. However, don’t despair if you have interests running in different directions. The trick is to get all those diverse notes of interests playing together in two-, three-, or four-part harmony. How, for example, might you get it all together if your profile shows a preference for both Gray Eminence and New Work Venturer?
That was the case with Sue, who was a fifty-plus economist with the World Bank and also a fine artist (see Figure 4-4 for her profile). Sue was facing a mandatory retirement situation and had always planned to focus on her painting when she retired. She dreamed of setting up a studio to showcase and sell her artwork and also to feature the art of women she had come to know through her work in the developing world. Art had always taken second place to Sue’s work, and now she relished the prospect of making it her primary activity.
As the date of her retirement approached, however, she began having second thoughts about her envisioned future. Although she was eager to launch her new life chapter, she was conflicted by a pull from another direction. To put it in terms of the Life Themes model, she was feeling pulled by both the Gray Eminence and New Work Venturer themes. She was finding it difficult to let go of her professional activities for improving the economic conditions of impoverished women in Bangladesh. On the one hand, she could see that the efforts of the World Bank and other agencies were producing slow but hopeful results, and she was convinced there was more she could do professionally in support of this progress. On the other hand, if she were ever going to launch the New Work Venturer chapter of her life, at the age of 58, she needed to start moving in that direction. If she didn’t soon launch her new endeavor, she feared becoming too old to make it happen.
FIGURE 4-4. SUE’S LIFE THEME PROFILE.
She resolved this dilemma by proceeding with her retirement plans for transitioning into her new venture. But she also opted to continue with her professional work, at least for a couple more years on a part-time basis. Drawing on the professional network she had established over the years, she found a suitable consulting situation with the federal government in a project related to her interests. When I last spoke with Sue, she was busily engaged on both fronts of her new life as a Gray Eminence/New Work Venturer. She knew, however, that she was going to bring her consulting activities to final closure in two or three more years, when she would fully devote her time and energies to a New Work Venturer’s life. Meanwhile, she was cutting out more time for painting, setting up her gallery, identifying women whose artwork she planned to feature, and doing satisfying work in the waning years of her life as an economist.
In a committed relationship, planning together is essential if you want to be together harmoniously in the future. The Life Themes Profiler is one of the tools you might find helpful in this endeavor. Figure 4-5 illustrates why. This example is for a couple who retired at about the same time and attended my “What’s Next” seminar to recreate a new life together. As Figure 4-5 shows, Donald’s future interests profiled as a Gray Eminence/Seeker-Explorer, while Rita’s was Sailor-Gardener and New Work Venturer. When they compared profiles, they were shocked and a bit dismayed to find how different their visions for the future were. Donald loved the work he was doing and intended to continue as a consultant indefinitely, or as he said, “to die in the saddle.” He also loved to travel and explore new and exotic places all over the world. He was proceeding into retirement under the assumption that he would consult for 30 or so weeks a year and that he and Rita would spend the rest of the year traveling together. Rita had a different vision for retirement. She was looking forward to enjoying their beautiful new home, gardening, grandmothering, and taking advantage of free time to get into great physical condition. Her assumption was that she and Donald would be enjoying her vision of the ideal lifestyle together. She also harbored aspirations of making occasional appearances on the speaking tour as a motivational presenter in her professional area.
FIGURE 4-5. LIFE THEMES PROFILES FOR RITA AND DONALD.
Bridging their differences took some negotiating, since they were both strongly committed to their visions. While their differing expectations for each other in their new life has continued to stimulate some conflict, they are working on a manageable agreement. For the time being, Donald continues to pursue a busy consulting agenda. Rita often stays at home doing her Sailor-Gardening when Donald travels as a consultant. Then she goes on the road herself, occasionally to deliver a talk here and there. Rita has had to adjust to the fact that Donald has no interest whatsoever in the Sailor-Gardening lifestyle, and he to the fact that Rita would rather remain at home than to accompany him on his many trips. Rita, however, does meet Donald occasionally as he finishes a consulting job, and they have fun traveling to places of interest to both. Donald, in turn, plans to limit his consulting travel to spend more time with Rita. While this lifestyle is not exactly what either of them would have preferred, it seems to be a workable compromise. They frankly admit, however, that their marriage was headed for trouble had they gone forward in unexamined assumptions that the ideal lifestyle for one also fit the other. Without serious discussions and willingness to compromise, they would probably not be together today; or if they were, one or the other would have had to accommodate submissively to the other’s wishes.
As things have progressed they both have developed a positive new sense of identity in the portion of their lives in which they go their separate ways professionally and take pleasure in the aspect of their relationship that involves many little honeymoons when together. They both attribute the insights acquired from the Life Themes Profiler for bringing their attention to a potential problem and opening the door to working toward an agreeable compromise.
Prioritizing Your InterestsAre you one of those individuals with so many interests that you have difficulty deciding where to begin? Maybe you start out with approximately twenty-some things you’re interested in doing, but before you really get going on these enticing options, you come up with another dozen or more possibilities. Then, as you start into these, they, in turn, produce still other tantalizing ideas and possibilities. As you’re probably aware, such a diffuse focus can lead to stress and become an energy drain. There is a remedy, however, for what might be called unbridled interest production. That remedy is prioritization. For many, this can be a bitter pill to swallow, as it means forsaking some activities in favor of others. But, let’s face it: this is the only way to orchestrate multiple motifs into syncopated harmony.
Then there are others with a different kind of problem, which is difficulty in identifying just what exactly it is that really attracts their interests. This happens to many who have been so focused on their career that they really have not had time to explore a world outside of work. For those challenged by what we might refer to as acute interest limititus, the problem is identifying interesting things to prioritize.
This is a fairly common condition, and for it, too, there is a remedy. That remedy begins with moving away from the mindset of “I don’t know what I want to do.” We can become conditioned to that kind of thinking, which then turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. To make a change in this condition, you may need to begin by changing the way you think. As a mature individual, you must know deep down that you are capable of generating ideas of all kinds, including what could make your new life more interesting. Then, as you start to think differently, you move on to identifying and exploring options and making choices. Sometimes you have to dabble and experiment in new areas to see what it is that taps the most interest.
Whether you have too many or two few ideas, here is a process for using your assessment results to develop a manageable list of priority possibilities:
1. Review the list of options related to your high theme areas from the Life Themes Profiler and circle any that interest you.
2. From the choices you have circled select the 10 of greatest interest and record them on the following worksheet. Be sure to add to your list your own creative ideas.
• In vision generating, you want to capture those ideas that pop into mind in strange places and unexpected times, like in the shower or driving, for example. It’s a good idea to carry a capture notebook with you when you’re in a vision-generating stage to write down those ideas that come to mind quickly, before they escape.
• Should you feel the need to expand your list of options, a good way to do that is to look through the index of the yellow pages of a city telephone directory and note any entries that connect with your interests. This, incidentally, is also a good way to explore interests by identifying people and organizations engaged in things about which you might want to learn more. College catalogs also can provide a rich source of ideas for interesting options.
3. When you have a nice sample of ideas on your list for the next chapter of your life, identify those for which you have the most energy and establish your priorities.
• Number your priorities from 1 through 10, with 1 being your strongest interest.
• List your priorities in the right-hand column, as shown with the examples on the “Prioritizing Your Preference” worksheet. Use your intuition to prioritize your list on the basis of what seems to be the most intriguing to next most intriguing, and so on.
4. From your prioritized list, generate a vision as a thematic guide for creating a meaningful direction for the next chapter of your life.
• Draw on your imagination. Think outside of the box here: after all, you are going to be living your life out of the fulltime employment business that has kept you boxed in for so long. So get creative here. Be outlandish!
• You might find it useful to write out and then revise the written version of your draft until you are satisfied that you have created the vision that captures your new purpose in life.
5. Discuss your vision with others as a way of further fleshing out and crystallizing your ideas. Write out your vision and post it somewhere where you will look at it frequently. To provide a few ideas of what a vision statement might look like, look over these samples.
Making Your Vision HappenA good vision for reinventing your life is one that connects personal interests with a good fit in the real world and provides both motivation and a direction for the next chapter of your life. But to provide life-reenergizing impetus, it is not enough to have a vision. The vision also must be implemented. How many people do you know with grand visions that never go anywhere? What stops many people from going forward with their new life vision is knowing how to make it happen. That, no doubt, has something to do with the fact that it is difficult to see how to do and become something markedly different from what you have been and done. Probably the most important thing you can do in this regard is to use the content of this chapter to create a new vision for your future and then to translate that into a plan of action. From there, it’s just a matter of implementing your envisioned new life one step at a time.
Recreating a new chapter in a step-by-step process may seem like slow going if you’re one of those whose busy work life has conditioned you to be oriented to quick results. It’s unlikely, however, that you can jump from an old structure into new life situation in a single giant leap. Implementing a new chapter of life that is markedly different from the old is likely to be an evolutionary process as opposed to a quick-change event. Perhaps the best advice in making a major life transition is to be future-oriented and to enjoy the process in the current moment. Take comfort in the knowledge that you will get to where you want to be and will become who you want to be. A couple of mixed metaphors are appropriate to this process: Rome wasn’t built in a day, and haste makes waste. So be bold in recreating your future vision, remain optimistic, be persistent and patient, and enjoy the process. It’s your life, and you don’t either want to miss the moment with an overly obsessive focus on the future, nor forfeit the future you could have for lack of vision in the moment.
In transitioning from a full-time employed centered life into a retirement lifestyle you are not only leaving a core structure behind in the form of your career purpose, you are also saying goodbye to your work associations and to the “you” that was. Few of us are content with becoming a has-been. You may know of individuals who retired to lives without recreating either a vision for a new life or generating a revitalizing new personal identity.
At one of the organizations where I work, these has-beens are referred to as ghosts in the halls. This is in reference to those who retired from their jobs but continue hanging around their old workplace looking to engage the currently employed in reminiscing about the “good old days” and/or to provide their views, usually of a derogatory nature, of what they see happening to the place.
In this chapter, you have been engaged with what might fill your next life chapter with meaning and purpose. In that regard, The Life Themes Profiler has helped hundreds of individuals clarify their visions and reinvent interesting new lives. Hopefully, you too have found this a useful process. In the next chapter you will have the opportunity to invent a new “you” to replace the one you leave behind as you transition into your next life. Use that chapter to keep from becoming a has-been and to become instead a reinvigorated new you.
