2024 October 8 A retirement tsunami

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me today to talk about how we define ourselves. If you like what you hear today please leave a Like, subscribe, tell your friends and send me a message. 

Thanks for joining me tonight to talk about how we, as older adults, define ourselves. We’ve talked about this before from different perspectives, but this time it will be in terms of defining ourselves by our work. More specifically, a change in—or perhaps the ending of—formal, regular work.

I had already started writing on this topic when I came across a Wall Street Journal article on the topic that conveniently provided some statistics. In confirming those figures, I realized there are currently a couple of different figures being called out in mainstream news that don’t really correlate, even though they are being presented in a similar manner.

I found many stories on the Baby Boomer Peak 65 in 2024, implying that this year will be the peak year of retirement. This isn’t really accurate, because most people retire well before age 65 (the average retirement age is still around age 62), but also because the number of people in the age bracket of 60 to 75 who are still working has increased by 6-7% over the last twenty years.

The other significant figure is that there are expected to be about 30.4 million Americans who turn 65 between the years of 2024 and 2030. That, as a point of interest, is more like 9.6 Baby Boomers per minute—well above our name of 7EveryMinute, so I estimated low! That is a lot of people who are potentially moving into a different phase of their lives.

This is coupled with the known fact that US Baby Boomers, more so than their following cohorts, tend to define themselves heavily by their careers and their companies. Add in that nearly ⅔ of retiring Boomers are not financially prepared for retirement. They may have to follow much different career paths than planned because they may need to keep working.

You can see that there are some uncomfortable times ahead for many people in this current age cohort. Not just financially, but also in terms of self-esteem and personal identity. How often have you been in a conversation with a stranger when it was asked, What do you do?

I have worked for myself for many years, and engineering has always been a part of my work, so I always reply, I am an engineer and a podcaster.

I have never been tied to the company I work for other than in terms of a contractual relationship, so I have no problem referring to myself by my training, even if it wasn’t my current primary job. But many people have been trained, often by their employers, to think of themselves as a Ford person or an IBM-er, etc.

It does provide some degree of belonging, but I also have been fortunate to realize that although work consumes a great deal of our free time, it really only should consume a very small part of our inner being and core values—our soul, if you will.

I have also been fortunate, by virtue of being a contractor, to not have been overly put off by being unemployed. At times it got mighty inconvenient, but it was always a transient situation and not something I equated to my own worth. Jobs come, jobs go, my inner worth remains the same. I always tried to provide excellent quality work because my work did represent me. But I was doing it for me and my honor, not for a company.

But again, if someone has spent many years, perhaps their entire working life, at one company, then the company becomes a much larger part of their own self-definition. Likely, most or all of their friends are there, many of their social activities may involve people from work. It is easy to see how it happens.

This is why it is such a challenge when suddenly—and often, it is suddenly—that the one cornerstone of their self-definition is removed. I got laid off is a very difficult phrase for someone with that mindset to say because they feel it indicates a drop in their own self worth.

I can’t tell you how many times I have laughed with one of my brothers about the likelihood of an impending layoff or other separation I have had during my career thus far. As a contractor it’s part of the game, and so I never let it define me. That was because I was able to work from a different frame of reference. The business was just a business, and my personal self-worth was defined by me, not by who I worked for or what I did for a living.

This is exactly why one of our core themes is about defining our vision, and living to that vision. When you live towards your vision then while it may be a goal to work for this company or that, it is probably to support a path to your vision. Your life vision probably isn’t to work for some particular company. When you live towards your vision, then when circumstances change, like your career path, it is easier to adjust because your vision remains constant.

But what about the people who have been led to believe that they are what their career is, or where they work? How can they adapt? This is currently a big problem, and the answers are often straightforward, but that doesn’t make them especially easy. Certainly one of the first things to do, in my opinion, is a bit of stepping back and doing a bit of a focus reset. 

It is time to get some perspective on life in general, and your own life in particular. We have talked about this before, but the short version is to start out thinking about what your life would look like if it was exactly what you wanted it to be.

The first pass of that vision is usually about private islands and lots of money or something along those lines, but after you envision that for a little bit, it will usually move on to a more realistic, and perhaps a harder to attain, vision.

A better world for your kids or peers, peace amongst the different peoples of the world, ending poverty, bringing education and work to the entire world’s population, ending totalitarian governments, helping the old lady next door, being a caring adult to the semi-abandoned kids you see across the street.

Once you really start thinking about the bigger picture, you realize little goals like money are really pretty insignificant except in terms of helping you to reach your bigger vision in a more effective way. It’s hard to help other people if you can’t pay your own rent, for example. But once you get beyond providing for your immediate and future needs, then you enter the magic realm of being able to make significant, lasting changes in the world.

A special note here: none of this has involved your title, your career, the company you worked for, etc. Those external things are all a product of a society that wants to divert your focus to items that society controls and which benefits certain segments of society. 

This first step is a huge step! In part because it requires you to let go of your future reference point, and turn the reference inside to your own core meaning. Both of those things are difficult changes. Society, of course, has lots of guardrails to discourage you from doing it, in the forms of memes, social media posts, advertising, etc.

We are taught to respect certain professions, and there is this semi-hidden scale that we all know. It used to be things like clergy, doctors, attorneys, bankers, teachers, and so on down the line. But if you look at many of the truly influential people in the world, they often don’t fit anywhere on the important persons list.

Mahatma Gandhi, Malala Yousafzai, Mother Teresa, Dalai Lama IV, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ruth Adler. Many of these people were either not an important person or are known for activities that did not intrinsically leverage their important person skills. 

If you look at Wikipedia’s page, for example it lists about 670 influential people for peace, many of whom are essentially unknown except for perhaps regionally. Now, who are the really important people? The person who heads Apple, or the person who ended apartheid in Africa? The point is, be careful of letting pop-culture and societal norms redefine you in a less meaningful way.

Once you have started reframing your own self in hopefully a more meaningful way to yourself, then you have to start the transition in how to reframe yourself to others, many of whom still define themselves and others, in terms of career and superficial things like wealth.

Instead of saying, I’m an Engineer, say something to totally reframe the conversation. Two that I really liked which I just read are:

- What do you do? I rock!

- What do you do? I’m a trophy husband! 

That dude even has business cards made up with that title! If you can’t hide it, flaunt it! What I like about both of those is that neither one starts off with a self-deprecating “Oh, I used to be …”. Instead it leaps right over that and into the core of their current essence!

At trade shows when I meet people I will often ask, What is your passion? Granted, the context is that I’m often with other coaches and influencers, but it really works well in most situations. If a person is a passionate physician, then they can just say so, and if their passion lies outside of their career, they can say that instead.

So now that we have addressed two of the biggest issues, what about the more pragmatic issues of moving ahead with true personal confidence? This often comes down to freshening your perspective to focus on all the skills you still do have, and how to reframe those skills to be meaningful in your current life situation.

If you used to be a great welder, maybe you look to be a great welding instructor or shop teacher. If you used to be a great Executive Admin, maybe you work part-time for a smaller firm or teach part time at a local community college. This isn’t saying you can replace everything identically, but it is saying that you, and your skills, still have great value!

The initial reaction for many people when their primary career ends, either voluntarily or otherwise, is that it happened because they weren’t valuable. This is very often the completely wrong assumption. Very often it is economic. If you are experienced you are probably also in the top tier of salary, and so eventually they will sort by cost and if they aren’t astute enough to value your experience, they might let you go. It is strictly economics, so stop beating yourself up.

Finally, all these changes take time. Maybe today you are feeling all upbeat and tomorrow you see someone from work and they are driving a new truck and talking about the great time they had at the work golf outing and you totally get down on yourself. Try, again, to step back and reframe your perspective.

Nothing says your buddy doesn’t have a $80,000 car loan on that new truck, and remember the golf outing was because they just got done working 60 hour weeks with no overtime because management messed up. A great rule of thumb is to never compare yourself to others. You rarely know the whole story and even if you did, they aren’t you so why are you measuring yourself to their standards?

If you retired early to spend time with the grandkids then say that to your friend. Yeah, I spent the weekend with the grandkids. My granddaughter and I caught her first fish together! It’s what you wanted to do, and you did it!! That is as equally something to be proud of as buying a new toy. The new toy is something that society says is important, the time with the grandkids is something that you know is important to yourself.

Remember to give yourself grace and acknowledge your personal wins. Change is opportunity. Your goals and your wins only have to be important to you, not to your friends, not to society, just to you and to those who matter to you. So, even though the rate of people entering into retirement continues to increase (well beyond our name of 7EveryMinute), that doesn’t mean you have to let this possible change in life situation be a negative in your life.

Remember: Reframe your view on life and get clear on your life vision. Learn to speak positively and confidently about your current situation. If you can’t hide it, flaunt it! Repurpose or reframe your skills, they still have value. Don’t beat yourself up if you were let go or forced into retirement. It’s often economics or poor management. Don’t compare yourself to others, not now, not ever. Give yourself some grace and acknowledge your personal wins. Take advantage of the new opportunities you have.

Embrace the world and the learning opportunities it brings, and never lose faith in yourself.

Your homework (always optional) is to think about what would happen if you got laid off tomorrow. Think of the best parts and the most challenging parts. Try to be specific but don't assume negative outcomes! You want to be aware of them, but you aren’t accepting them as a done deal. 

Extra points if you work through every worst outcome and look for ways to mitigate it. It’s not a race. Think for a few days and be open minded. Get a house-mate? Learn to teach online? Everything is fair game. You are brainstorming with yourself and you can’t say no to anything initially. Now revisit the worst cases and you will probably see there is a path where you don’t end up destitute, even if it’s not your ideal outcome. Now you can start looking at tradeoffs and figuring out how you want to live this next phase of your life in a way that seems reasonable.  

That’s it for the evening. Please remember the many wars currently active in the world—in Ukraine, the Middle East, Africa. Everywhere there are disasters or suffering. If you are able and interested, the page of Ukraine donation links is still up at UKR7.com.

Also remember the damage and injury in the wake of the recent hurricanes in the Southeast US, the Caribbean and Mexico. Remember and pray for the aid workers from WCK who died. The link to World Central Kitchen, which is José Andrés’ group, is WCK.org. They are totally humanitarian, providing meals for people in need.

Remember that one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others. So as always, be true to yourself and live your life aligned with your true goals and feelings.

As always, thank you for stopping by! If you found something interesting or useful please pass it along and please subscribe and hit that Like button. And if not, please drop me a comment as to what you would like to hear. 

Have a great week! Remember to live the life you dreamed of because that is the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone and see you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com.