The Choice is Yours: Retirement or Passionate Longevity

I have never liked the word retirement.  For me, it conveys withdrawal and being less than engaged.  I believe life is all about engagement and contribution to the greater good.  From my perspective, ‘passionate longevity’ should be the mantra in all we do through our career and beyond.

Serving as a Life & Career Coach for the past 30 years  I have seen  the good, the bad and the ugly including: people in their 20’s & 30’s  already retired in dead-end jobs they hate ( fortunately, many eventually made a career change or started their own business and moved closer to their  dream  job and work bliss); successful executives creeping uncomfortably towards retirement believing anything after their present gig will be a precipitous step down;  65 year olds celebrating the end of their formal working career because now they can pursue ‘full time’ the volunteer work they love; and people well into their 80’s completely engaged in their ‘life work’ while some of their peers  stagnate, resigned to being put out to pasture.  How is it people can hold the same jobs and go through the same life transitions yet experience them completely differently? Why is what is empowering to some so deflating and debilitating to others?

At age 56, I am a baby boomer or what the current literature refers to as a ‘Mature Worker’ or ‘Zoomer’.  No matter the label, I am at that magic life point where I can pause, stop Zooming, reflect back on a wonderful 33 year career and look forward to another 33 some years of ‘passionate longevity’ full of further engagement and contribution.  I am also of the age where I can reflect on life’s lessons with a somewhat balanced perspective — my three kids remind me my Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is gradually diminishing, while my supportive older friends remind me my Emotional Intelligence (EI) is increasing.  Using both my IQ and EQ I have distilled two essential life lessons about how to achieve passionate longevity:

1. Be magnetic to what you love. The magic recipe for this life skill has 5 ingredients:   1. Identify your preferred skills and unique abilities 2. Know what interests you  3.  Connect with people who share your values  4. Understand what types of environments motivate you  5. Identify and get into work and play activities that capitalize on  1 – 5
2. Understand the nobility and greater sense of purpose in what you do. It is inspiring when you find it. This is illustrated wonderfully by a story; the first is about a traveller who encounters, one at a time, two different stone masons working different ends of the same structure. He asks each one, “What are you doing?” The first responds, “Isn’t it obvious? I am just laying brick”, while the second says “I am building a Cathedral where thousands will congregate over the millennium to celebrate”.

Whatever you do it is your choice, so be magnetic to it and take the time to see the nobility in it, and passionate longevity will be yours.

Now look in the mirror. What do you see? A cathedral builder or a bricklayer?