The My Next Phase Newsletter - Volume 2 | |||
5 Keys To Your Successful Retirement
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In the stage of life we traditionally call retirement, success has two main ingredients: having a purpose, and living healthy. Your purpose involves having a pursuit you highly value that can provide genuine, fundamental fulfillment. The second piece, living healthy, provides the foundation you need to pursue and enjoy those activities that give you fulfillment, and ultimately, that provide the quality of life you want, expect, and deserve in retirement. The healthy foundation piece in itself has five keys, which we've identified through 50-plus years of organizational and clinical psychology (research and practice), and seven-plus years we spent developing the My Next Phase program. The five keys are:
Let's look at what each key means for your health, and why and how each applies to retiring successfully. Key #1: Regular, Physical Exercise The first key, physical activity, translates this way: Get regular, physical exercise! (Any questions?) Think of it as your retirement foundation's own foundation. |
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Open practically any book about health at any age and you'll see this simple advice, because the evidence leaves no doubts at all. Good health depends on regular exercise. Period. It is time to stop simply listening, and to tune-in, once and for all. With advancing age, exercise becomes even more important, as our circulatory systems, muscles, bones and other critical systems and components more rapidly degrade. Exercise slows the deterioration. It's anything but doom and gloom; quite the opposite, in fact. Exercise in itself begets energy. For many, it provides the kind of focus and stamina necessary to successfully handle the remaining four keys. Research links exercise with both quality and quantity of life. One recent study found that walking for 30 minutes per day, five times per week, can add one year of life. The same study found that more vigorous, aerobic exercise, like running or swimming for one hour, four times per week, can add an average of three or four years of life span. Andrew Weil's latest book, Healthy Aging, also recommends regular strength training, two or three times per week, to maintain healthy muscle. Get up off that couch, and get going! Key #2: Mental Challenge The second key, mental challenge, consists of difficult, engaging pursuits that call for focusing the mind, concentrating, learning new things, solving problems and thinking with agility. Examples include learning a foreign language, mastering a musical instrument, attending college, writing professionally, doing crossword puzzles, and playing competitive bridge or chess. One study shows that elders who play musical instruments for symphony orchestras live longer than their peers - and are far less prone to develop Alzheimer's disease. Those who pursue challenging mental activity as they get older may, according to some experts, develop a kind of "cognitive reserve" that protects against the ravages of Alzheimer's. Near-retirees are increasingly choosing to stay mentally active by continuing to work in their life long professions, often after redefining their role, and downgrading the intensity level. Some research shows that professionals who keep working even part time after traditional "retirement age" - doctors, dentists, professors, reporters and writers, for some - tend to remain healthier as they get older. Bottom line: find something to do in your next phase that keeps your mind active. (Even if it's a new version of the same thing you've been doing, if you happen to like that thing.) Key #3: Social Connection Social connection involves having active ties with friends, family and community. In some instances, it means making new ties. For healthy retirement's sake, the most important social ties involve friends who voluntarily choose to maintain relationships with you. Research shows that people with close networks of friends who spend regular time together tend to live longer, and stay healthier. Other research demonstrates that having a supportive network of friends can buffer the adverse effects of stress, and may even reduce the risks of illness, and speed recovery when illness does occur. Relationships with family can also provide social support (though, of course, we don't voluntarily choose any relatives beyond a spouse or life partner). Because family ties can mix both support and conflict, they might not always prove as beneficial as friendships. Great benefits can occur from membership in a supportive community, a group of people who depend on one another from day to day. Community connection often means going regularly to a place where the "regulars" greet you by name, acknowledge you without prompting, and miss you if you don't show up - like a coffee house, church, gymnasium or community center. The Cheers theme song writer got it right: "...where everyone knows your name, and some of your story." This is especially critical if you choose to move to a new place when you retire, where you know little or few people. You will need to work to find the kind of community that is right for you. Don't be discouraged if the first couple of choices don't feel right. Take on a supermarket shopper's mentality, and keep at it. Recent research found belonging to a close-knit community, like a religious group or volunteer organization, correlates with better health among a more mature adult population. Key #4: A Passion The first three keys to a successful retirement must support the important fourth one: a passion, a reason to get out of bed every morning. Replacing work with a passion is an important step. Disengaging from work can leave one rudderless. Looking forward to a retirement marked by an absence of activity - to, once and for all, "just being left alone" - is one of the most frequent, and profound, retirement (non) planning mistakes people make. For most of us, work supplies a great deal more than money. Work provides many things, among them a professional identity, social interactions, a sense of accomplishment, a sense of belonging, mental challenge. The list goes on. Moreover, whether we like our jobs or not, work provides a reason to get going each day. To have a successful retirement, we must find a motivating passion, an activity that energizes us. For some it's a new work arrangement or perhaps a new vocation. For others, a different type of calling: volunteering, spirituality, community service, political action, sports, learning, travel or a hobby. The nature of the passion is much less important than having one. Without a reason to get out of bed, retirement can be a depressing and isolating experience. Identify or pursue and already-known passion, and retirement can be entirely the opposite - a fantastic, fulfilling phase of your life, in ways you may not yet know. Key #5: A Personality Tailored Plan Key Five is where it all comes together: where you incorporate the previous four keys into a retirement plan that suits your personality. Ask yourself: How will you build your foundation of success in retirement on those four keys? One answer depends on your personality. For example, if you have a highly structured personality - if you like things organized and orderly - you'll probably find it easy to adopt a regimen of regular exercise. If, on the other hand, you have a more flexible, spontaneous personality - and you resist planned, repetitive activity - you'll probably find it difficult to sustain a habit of exercise. For a sustainable exercise regimen that suits your personality and comes naturally, you'll need to find ways to make exercise interesting, like walking in new, different places, at different times of day. Or maybe you can join an interesting group of people who do a stimulating activity that involves exercise, like a cycling club. Building the foundation for a successful retirement through the four keys highlighted earlier won't happen by accident. It takes work. You'll need a plan - one that fits your personality. Start now. Take time to understand your personality and develop a sustainable plan that suits your personal traits, and incorporates the four keys to health in retirement: physical activity, mental challenge, social connection and a passion. Professor Keith Bender's research (professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee) found that those who plan for retirement are usually happier, than those who approach it without a plan or only with a financial plan. People who enter retirement without some kind of active, personally fulfilling pursuit face a harsh reality: a risk of shortening their lives. We know a few cases of retirees who died early in their rocking chairs, echoing a wider trend found in research by an insurance company: business people who retired to a life of leisure reduced their post-retirement life expectancy, on average, by 9 to 10 years. My Next Phase offers a groundbreaking interactive tool that helps people retire their way, starting with a look at personality. It assists people in working through the important aspects of non-financial retirement planning. Using a patent-pending, personality-tailored process, My Next Phase guides members through the retirement transition helping them achieve a meaningful next phase in life. Get started at www.MyNextPhase.com. To forward to a friend, please click here. To send a message or question to the My Next Phase team, please click here. To learn more about membership, please click here. Copyright ©2007 My Next Phase. All Rights Reserved | |||
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