I didn’t expect the retirement process to be this hard. I mean, what’s so hard about not working when really all I wanted to do was exactly NOT that! After 41 years as a mortgage banker, I had no appetite to review yet another credit report or tax return, nor did I have the interest in being the best in my field anymore—I had accomplished that long ago! When my friends and family expressed their concern about my decision to retire, I jokingly responded, “Does Madonna create any #1 hits anymore? I’m moving on, just like her, I said. Thankfully, they didn’t ask me where I was moving on to, because for a long, long time, I simply had no answer for that seemingly simple existential question.
Typical for my mindset for the last 40 years, I spent untold hours, days, months prepping and analyzing how to maximize my portfolio so that my transition would be successful. So many meetings and conference calls with my financial advisor. So many portfolio adjustments. So much time speaking to my CPA about minimizing the tax burden of withdrawing money from investments. My head was spinning from all the calculations, and I’m sure my blood pressure spiked with each analysis. It didn’t help that my bookshelf overflowed with retirement planning books, each one of them warning of the financial “disasters” that the next 30 years could bring.
Nothing was helping. The reassurance from my CPA and financiaandl advisor fell on deaf ears. The podcasts and all the You Tube videos never really helped either. And to top it off, the worst part of it all was that all everyone thought I was making the wrong move. My wife, my kids, my friends and associates all thought I was out of my mind to make the move.
But I wanted more. I wanted to feel inspired and fulfilled just as I had been in the business world for all these years. Just like then, I wanted the freedom to choose what I wanted to create and to feel a sense of accomplishment in doing it. To finally be able to go outside of my conventional, collective life and live on what I call the outer fringes of the matrix. In short, I wanted to have my two feet firmly within the boundaries of my old life, yet most of the time tiptoeing just a bit outside of that life, dabling in all sorts of other activities that I never had any time to do up until now.
Knowing what I wanted was the easy part. Actualizing it took nearly three years and is still continuing. Not only did I keep getting stuck in the agonizing doubt about whether my decision was the right one,, but inertia kept me frozen in the past with the thinking that everything that I did up until now was necessary and important while everything that I wanted to do was merely optional. For over 40 years, my entire body and soul went into becoming a successful mortgage banker, mostly for the sake of my wife and kids, money and status. But now that that part of of my life is over, , honestly, what is necessary about singing in a choir or performing cabaret? What is necessary about writing my memoir, tap dancing lessons, or traveling to Spain to help Spanish executives with their English fluency? And how about training for half marathons and spending at least an hour or two in the gym several times per week? In comparison with my career and making money, none of these activities were urgent to accomplish, or necessary from a financial perspective and none had any relevance to anyone except myself.
It took me well over two years to somewhat come to terms with and acknowledge the “new me”. And to understand that those aforementioned questions were looking at the situation all wrong. I wasn’t’ retiring at all. What I really was doing was using all those skills and faculties that I mastered in business and applying them to my “new business”—the business of me!! I started to realize that this new stage of life was a continuum of congruency with my life’s values and aspirations and those values and aspirations were the exact same ones that I exempified at work. In digging into what motivated me all these 40 plus years at work, I finally realized that it wasn’t’ absolutely necessary for me to work as hard or as many hours as I did. Nor was it absolutely necessary to make as much money or build such a large business. What was necessary, though, for me at least, was to strive to be the best, to give it my all because I value excellence. Success was merely an outcome of what I valued. So, in my new endeavors, I’m still congruent with the value of excellece—I’ll be great as I possibly can be at singing, at my marathons, tap dancing, cabaret, and piano.
This understanding seems so obvious and simple, but it did take me several years to come to terms with the “business of me”. And so, with somewhat convoulted thinking, I really am NOT retired. I am merely continuing to express my values by creating the drive, challenge and excellence in whatever I decide to do. The planning of my life and the framework for it is the same. The question has always been: “ how do I create the best, most spectacular life possible”? My goal in business was to create an extraofiinaty business and now, the goal is the same—-to create an extraofinaty life ; a life of tremendous productivity, pride in accomplishments that make life full of joy, excitement and fulfillment.
