ReFirement Life

We just completed five training sessions in the  Retirement Coaching Training Program sponsored by Mitch Anthony, author of The New Retirementality.   During these sessions Mitch presented 6 "tools" that are conversation starters which we will use in our "Retirement Coaching Starter Package". We both completed the tools and had our own personal retirement conversation.  A couple of our favorites were: Visioning :  This is an exercise where you rank 16 things to do in retirement by picking the top 6.  We were pleased that both of our visions were similar but it took some conversation to clarify our individual picks.  It is very important to identify where you and your partner's vision of retirement is in alignment. Lifestyle versus Economic Reasons for Working :  This exercise ranks 20 reasons for working and quantifies whether you value work for the lifestyle benefits or the economic payoff.  This helped us identify the aspects of work that w...

After retiring from the financial planning business, I became very aware of an emptiness inside.  I asked myself:  "If I am what I do, then who am I when I don't?"  I succeeded in retiring   from owning a business, but I was not prepared to " retire to"  something. One of the first challenges of ReFirement is to identify what to "retire to". How do I create purpose and meaning in my life if I have been consumed by my profession for 40+ years?  Answering this question started my self-discovery journey. The "7th Inning Stretch" is a time for me to contemplate and begin again to live the life that is true to my values.  I suggest that you begin your own journey by identifying your core values. One of the values that Paula and I have embraced our entire life is "making a contribution to others."  We facilitated a personal growth workshop called the Aspen Temenos   The work was very fulfilling but physically exhausting.  We stopped ...