Write Your Personal Encore Plan
Sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Laguna Beach, we struck up a conversation with a boomer couple. They were very curious about our topic and the book you are now reading. The wife said that just the previous night, over dinner, they had been discussing their own future. They had just retired from their main careers. “We were saying to each other, ‘What now?’ We do not have it figured out at all, but we know that there is much more ahead for us,” she said.
We have built the foundation for a plan. You know there are choices to make. Now let’s finish this book with a challenge for you: to write up your plan. We know how easy it would be at this point to toss this book aside and go on to the next, but please don’t, not just yet. Our deep desire is for you to put a plan down on paper. Not a perfect plan . . . there is no such thing. Just get started. Put pen to paper—or start typing.
We have a free workbook you can download and use for this exercise at www.launchyourencore.com. Please download it as your guide to this chapter. We want to again acknowledge the great contribution of Elke Hanssmann for most of the content of this final chapter. Be sure to read the “About Elke Hanssmann” section at the close of the book.
The idea of going back to the drawing board may be both frightening and invigorating at the same time. We are writing from the assumption that you are indeed the architect and designer of your own future, but it will require you to make a significant commitment to somewhat methodically and thoughtfully compose what your life may look like.
Tony Campolo surveyed fifty people over the age of ninety-five, asking what they would do differently if they had to live life over again.1 The top three answers were take more risks, reflect more, and invest in more things that will last beyond their lifetime. Oliver Wendell Holmes put a different slant on the same point when he wrote, “A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!”2 What a sad obituary, to die with all our music still within us. Regrets at the end of a life do not need to be the overriding theme of your life. You can choose; you must choose. By not choosing you also choose.
So—let’s get to work. Like a composer, start with a blank sheet of paper and watch the melody of your future life emerge as you work through the exercises below! Different voices will add to your song as you reflect on your life up to now. Let’s start this process by exploring what those different voices have to say about us. Remember that you can download our free workbook for this chapter at www.launchyourencore.com. Do yourself a favor, go there right now and download it. Things will make so much more sense.
The Nine Stages of Your Encore Plan—Overview
Writer and anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson asserts that
composing a further life involves thinking about the entire process of composing a life and the way in which earlier experience connects to later. It involves looking with new eyes at what has been lived so far and making choices that show the whole process in a new light and that offer a sense of completion and fulfillment.3
So that you don’t get overwhelmed, here is the map for the rest of this chapter:
- Listening to the voices of your past.
- Completing the “me at my best” exercise.
- Identifying your temperament.
- Facing your fears.
- Clarifying your dreams.
- Defining your finances.
- Prioritizing your time commitments.
- Brainstorming specific options.
- Envisioning the future.
1. Listening to the Voices of Your Past
Your life-mapping exercise (and if you haven’t completed this, we suggest you return to chapter 8 and do this before you proceed) will have given you a significant chunk of material to work with. In light of your past life reflections, complete the questions below to identify what it is that you specifically have to offer. If you are serious about making a plan, you must go back and start with that life map. Really. It will be fun, we promise.
Strengths. Anyone starting a business will begin by assessing what they bring into the new venture. What personal strengths do you bring?
For example: good listener, creative mind, relational warmth, business savvy.
Exercise: On a separate piece of paper, list a minimum of fifteen strengths (character, experience, skills) that you bring as assets into your new venture. A helpful tool for a more formalized assessment of your strengths that can complement your own brainstorming is to take a StrengthsFinder assessment. (See chapter 17 and Resources.)
Principles. What principles do you live by? How do you approach things and why?
For example: I will not give up in the face of opposition.
Exercise: List five life principles that run through your whole life.
Past mistakes. What mistakes did you make and what lessons did you learn from them that you can pass on to others? Where have you failed and what lessons have you learned from your failures that you can pass on to others? It is not wise to dwell on the mistakes of your past, but it is a good idea to use them as teaching points for your future.
For example: I neglected my family in pursuit of my career, and now my relationship with my children is not as close as I would like it to be.
Exercise: Think of three mistakes that you have made. What advice can you pass on to someone who might be in danger of repeating those mistakes? Write down both the mistakes and the advice!
Weaknesses. What weaknesses have limited your contribution in the past? How have you developed ways to manage those weaknesses to minimize their effect?
For example: procrastination, indecisiveness, avoidance of conflicts.
Exercise: List five weaknesses that could hinder your pursuit of your new life venture. What strategies can you employ to minimize their impact on your future?
Skills. What transferrable skills are in the toolbox of your life? What are you naturally good at? Where have you consistently seen good results from your work and contribution? What jobs do you gravitate to, and which ones do you habitually procrastinate on?
For example: problem solving, negotiating, motivating people, research skills.
Exercise: List at least ten transferrable skills that come out of your previous life experience. Once you have completed your own list, find a former colleague and a friend and ask them both to complete your list with ten skills more each.
Values. What is really important to you? How do you currently spend your time, money, and energy—and what are the underlying values your choices are serving? What makes you angry or frustrates you about others? What do you fight for?
For example: generosity, inclusiveness, equal opportunities, security, adventure.
Exercise: Elicit ten of your core values—the drivers and intrinsic motivators that determine where you put your time, energy, and money. Once you have extracted the values, translate them into behavioral choices. For example: I value adventure, therefore I choose to take opportunities to discover new territory and take risks along the way.
Character. Why do people like (or dislike) you? In what ways can people count on you? What qualities within you have been a blessing to others?
For example: Reliable, fun, honest, efficient, precise, optimistic.
Exercise: Consult three people who know you well and who you know to be honest with you. Ask them for feedback about your character and look for themes that are evident in all three results. Now you can add your own perception of your character traits.
2. Completing the “Me at My Best” Exercise
In order to extract where your best contribution could be, select five incidents in your life (it could be achievements from your work, sports, academic studies, and so forth) where you feel you were at your best. Write each incident out in detail, outlining what makes it stand out for you. What happened? What were you doing? What was happening around you? Who else was involved? Do this for each individual incident and start looking for emerging patterns. What are common factors in all five incidents? What would the context and situation need to look like to again bring together the different components that you identified?
3. Identifying Your Temperament
The importance of knowing yourself before you make big choices that will affect the next few years of your life cannot be underestimated. Are you an initiator or would you rather wait for someone else to give you direction? Do you prefer stability or embrace and welcome change? Are you energized by people or prefer solitude? There are a myriad of personality inventories that can help you find a language that describes your preferences and can serve as a natural filter system through which to consider practical options. We discussed these in detail in chapter 17. The DiSC personality profile and the Myers-Briggs type inventory are among the better-researched instruments that have provided guidance and insight for many people at life’s crossroads. Take at least one of the tests available and apply what you learn about yourself to your future life composition. There are many free versions, but you will gain deeper insights by discussing your results with a trained professional who can help you maximize your insights and think through applications for you. (See our Resources section.)
4. Facing Your Fears
Nothing is stronger than the paralyzing power of fear. Most regrets we have in life can be traced back to fear—most risks never taken, most relationships never pursued, most adventures unlived. Fear, we suggest, is your biggest enemy on your journey to composing your further life. Life as we know it is coming to an end. Routines, frameworks, and structures are being taken away. Laurent Daloz observes it “can be frightening to think of dismantling it, for we imagine it to be all we have and in order to ‘build fresh structures, we must reach out ahead of ourselves, and we fear the chasm below.’”4 Fear has been a constant and familiar travel companion throughout many of our lives—unwanted and uninvited but stubbornly consistent. Nothing we have done that has had any significance has been done in the absence of fear.
Elke writes of the following journey:
In my thirties I moved to Spain, to take a job I had co-created with my new boss, unable to even speak one word of Spanish. In my midforties I set out to study for my master’s degree. In my later forties I began a romantic relationship, having been single all my adult life. Whatever new adventures I pursued, I’ve always needed to take Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice to heart: “If the fear doesn’t go away—go and do it afraid.” Fear can sabotage your future from within like nothing else. It lives subtly in your heart, posing as reality and intimidating you! The best way to combat fear is to drag it into the cold light of day, name it, and fight it. Whenever you allow fear to win, your realms of choices will shrink.
Growing older brings its own set of limitations, so allowing fear to shrink your options further would be foolish. Daloz, in his research among adults returning to higher education in mid-life, often encountered the enemy of fear. He notes that fear “is born of simple anxiety of an unknown future,” blinds and paralyzes us, leads to denial and passivity in the face of anticipated losses and insecurities, yet is often unclear as to what may come instead!5 We often say that F.E.A.R. stands for “false expectations appearing real.” Naming and facing your fears is a great step to disarming them. Once exposed they often lose their power, or enable you to concretely combat the worst-case scenarios fear can conjure in your mind and emotions. What are some common fears that might hold you back? What are some negative naysaying voices that drag you down?
For example: I am afraid that no one will want what I am creating. The phone will not ring and the emails will stop. I am afraid that I might end up lonely once I no longer go to the office. I fear isolation, loss of significance, conflict with my spouse if I am home more, and so forth.
Exercise: Allow your fears to surface, don’t suppress them. List them, as many as you can think of. Then attack each one of them: What can you do to ensure the worst-case scenario will not happen to you? You can today choose to move out of a victim-state where life happens to you and you are a passive, disempowered recipient! For example, if you fear ill health, what can you set in motion today to ensure good health in your next chapter? For each of the fears you identified, work through this little exercise:
- What’s the fear?
- What is the worst-case scenario?
- How likely is that to happen?
- What can you do today to combat it?
5. Clarifying Your Dreams
Oliver Wendell Holmes puts it so well that we have to quote him once more: “Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them.” Those songs are our dreams. God has planted dreams in all of our hearts. The Bible reminds us that God will give us the desires of our hearts—and often he has been the one who has planted those dreams deep within us. What have you always dreamed of doing? Accomplishing? Disappointments in life can erode those dreams and create an obstacle to dreaming again. Courage to dream again is built when we remember the many dreams that have become a reality in our lives.
To enable yourself to dream new dreams, take a few minutes and remember some things that have materialized that started as a dream in your heart. List ten dreams that have become a reality for you that you are very proud of and satisfy you as you look back over your life.
And even if you have already answered these four questions we first listed for you in chapter 7, now is a good time to go over your answers with fresh eyes.
Current situation: What are you doing right now to fill your time? Make a list of all the things that seem to be filling your calendar. Then next to each item, on a scale of 1 to 10, put a number by the level of passion/satisfaction that you get out of that activity. One means no passion, ten means there’s nothing you’d rather be doing. For example, “I take care of my grandkids every Wednesday.” I have a dear friend who does that every week, and he just smiles and comes alive when he tells me about it. The first step in any assessment is to take a look at what you are doing now.
What fuels you? As you look back over your life, make a list of the things that you most enjoyed doing. They could be activities, hobbies, aspects of your profession, or anything else. What are you passionate about? What lights you up? When you do these things you sense God’s pleasure. Like Eric Liddell, the famous Olympic athlete, who said, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure.”
What are your dreams about your future? Now let’s dream about the future. What would be your dream job? Whether they paid you or not, you’d love to do this. Make a list of all the things you love to fill your calendar with. Go crazy. Fill your list with fun, passion, and satisfaction.
Now add a list of ten current dreams that you have for the next chapter of your life.
Reality check: What do others think? If you were to ask your spouse or trusted friends what they think you should do, what are things you know they would mention? We highly recommend this piece of activity as you’re making decisions about your future. We do not want to set ourselves up for failure by creating the kind of expectations that could never be fulfilled. If I’m sixty years old, I’m not going to become a commercial airline pilot or a brain surgeon.
6. Defining Your Finances
While dreams matter and serve as a driving force to motivate and inspire us, there are also harsh financial realities at times. What financial obligations limit your choices? What new sources of income can you identify? What financial needs can you anticipate in the future? We discussed finances in depth in chapter 6; you might want to go back to that chapter and see those notes again.
Exercise: I, Hans, and my wife, Donna, did this exercise just recently as our income picture changed dramatically. It was very useful and set our hearts at peace. Make a budget of your anticipated living costs. What will be required to cover health insurance; household costs; and financial obligations to friends, family, and organizations you are supporting? How much money will you need to live on, and what money is available to be spent on new enterprises? If you use a spreadsheet, like we did, just make three columns. The first is what income you anticipate. The second column is what you have to pay each month—“must pay.” Then the third column is “want tos” if there is enough money left. Then monitor your budget each month to see how you’re doing.
7. Prioritizing Your Time Commitments
How much time do you want to devote to your new ventures? How much time do you have available in light of other obligations and commitments you also want to keep? We run into many people who want to have a lot of time to play and spend with grandchildren. That is perfect. Make a concrete six-month to one-year plan with an anticipated time log for how your new life choices could be incorporated into your current life structure. When would you do these new activities? Several days a week? A few times a month? (And, of course, be sure your ideas sync with your kids, the parents of said grandkids.) Then add them to your calendar. We never get what we dream about; we get what we schedule.
8. Brainstorming Specific Options
In light of what you have identified so far, what are some concrete options that are emerging for you? If you need some help getting started, go back and look at our lists of options and generative activities in chapter 19.
- Is there a specific segment of society you want to contribute to?
- Which specific organizations, institutions, or networks are catching your attention?
- What specific skills would you like to be able to use?
9. Envisioning the Future
Clarity defines reality. Being crystal clear on the future life you want will release within you the motivation, courage, and drive to actually pursue what you know you want. However, many people struggle, and countless times we hear people say, “Argh! I’m just not the visionary type.” Well, do not despair. There is a way even those who are not natural visionaries have found helpful to access some of their hopes, dreams, passions, and desires for the future.
We have already talked about dreaming about your future; now we are taking it just a bit further. Again, Elke speaks from her experience:
I vividly recall a stretch in my life when I felt I was plateauing—life was ticking along, but there was a distinct absence of excitement and even some fear of the future. Was this all there was? I sat down in a park during a work assignment in Brazil with pen and paper and started to write. In the beginning it was slow and I felt uninspired. But as I got going, my thoughts started flowing and my future began to take shape before my eyes. Even now, almost ten years later, I can feel the surge of energy and the feeling of animo (Spanish for spirit)—take courage, my heart—rushing through my body. Much of what back then was a dream has since materialized!
Letter to yourself exercise: Take a blank sheet of paper, your journal, or our worksheets and imagine that you have been fast-forwarded into the future by nine years. So, if you’re sixty-one now, you are writing this on your seventieth birthday. This is a letter from your seventy-year-old self to your sixty-one-year-old self, describing in great detail what your life looks like now. Where do you live? Who is sharing your life? How are you spending your days? What has happened in between? What are your dreams for your friends and family? Where would you like to be financially when you are seventy? What do you need to consider in terms of health and fitness if you want to live your newly composed life well?
Allow yourself to dream and not to let reality interfere with your thoughts too early—let thoughts and ideas flow and write from your heart. Many of our workshop participants have been amazed at how this simple exercise helped them unlock a much clearer and vivid picture of the future, which they then felt compelled to pursue! Another interesting little statistic: the likelihood of your dreams and hopes becoming reality increases by more than 50 percent if you actually formulate and write them down, since it brings them to a level of awareness where you then become far more intentional about pursuing them. Read the letter out loud to yourself—and if you are married, to your spouse (after they have completed their own letter, of course). Discuss what you have to set in motion today to be able to live your envisioned life tomorrow! Be concrete, adding action steps, deadlines, and real commitments.
Pulling It All Together
“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible,” according to Tony Robbins.6 By now you will have a much clearer idea about the design of your future life, the various components you need to incorporate, what matters most, and what a meaningful outlet could look like. Hopefully you have come up with a very cool plan for your encore. Now it is time to get moving. You have planned the life, now live the plan.
Stephen Covey is the author of the bestselling book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which has sold more than fifteen million copies around the world since it was first published in 1989. He is fond of saying, “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”7 In order to move from insight into action, take some concrete steps to pursue your plans.
- Explore. What organizations, groups, or initiatives are involved in doing something you would like to be part of? Research what the actual options for involvement for you could look like.
- Exposure. Get your hands dirty! Plan concrete steps to get a taste of what you consider getting involved in.
- Evaluate. As you try out new things, take time to reflect on your experiences. What do you like about what you are doing, and what differs from your expectations?
- Enlist support. Consult wise owls for feedback, along with your spouse and trusted friends.
OK, we admit, we have given you a lot of work. Take a stab at it and let us know how it goes. You can contact us and ask questions at www.launchyourencore.com. As you compose the new chapters of your future life, keep a reflective journal. Record your thoughts, feelings, and adventures as you go along. I, Hans, ended up writing over 150 pages of reflections in the year after I left my main career and transitioned into my encore!
Your new life is like a pair of unfamiliar shoes—maybe slightly uncomfortable as you start walking in them, but increasingly “yours” as you continue.
You’ve done it! You have arrived at composing the blueprint of your future life. Now go and do it! Carpe diem! Take courage. You can! The future belongs to those who dare to create it.
Glory belongs to God, whose power is at work in us. By this power he can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. (Eph. 3:20 GW)