Looking within: how to renew your sense of purpose
A mini personal coaching session on finding your purpose - by popular demand.
In this edition
Feature article: Looking within: how to renew your sense of purpose
Prime Time podcast
From Bec’s Desk
Your letters: You little beauty
Looking within: how to renew your sense of purpose
Why do you get up in the morning? Why do you do what you do? What do you do?
To someone preparing for or in early retirement these are really awkward questions because they feel like they are moving away from the time in life when you have to have answers to them. But they really are important questions in a life where we might have 30 more years to live.
Over recent months and years, I’ve done quite a bit of research into ‘finding your purpose’. And, from this, I believe we all need to have an aim, or a sense of purpose to feel fulfilled.
Some of you will be shaking your heads right now, saying “You’re wrong Bec! I just want to feel aimless for a while after a life of feeling busy - that’s why I’m retiring”.
And that might be so. You might be looking for a break or a change from the busy-ness, from the life that you have been living up until now. Retirement can bring you this opportunity to create change and put some space into your life so you can feel refreshed, and ready to explore new things. For many people, retirement itself is just a transition, into a different aim, and then that aim is built out into a new set of goals, new curiosity and new learnings.
The thing no one tells you is that purpose starts on the inside. It is a state of self-awareness of what you want to be doing, and how you want to be participating, and how much you want to keep learning. And when you step into your purpose, actively, then you go about your day expressing it through the things you do. When you feel like you are achieving your purpose, you are in fact doing things that align with your gifts, passions and values in your everyday activities. It’s a powerful feeling, and you don’t need to be earning money to feel a sense of purpose.
Jill in the Epic Retirement online course asked a great question in our community zone this week. It’s worth sharing!
“Throughout our lives as parents, friends and workers many of us give our time to others to help them achieve their goals. When we are no longer needed in these situations we may have lost sight of our own dreams. Where do we even begin to search for our purpose or find and rekindle forgotten dreams.”
It’s great to be honest with ourselves at this stage of life. And, in response to the question, I’m going to lay out some steps that might help you. We’ll be workshopping these on Thursday night in the course, together.
Step one: Explore your own stories
One of my favourite processes for coaching people to rediscover their sense of purpose is to first get them to explore their own personal stories. If I was sitting in front of you, I would ask you to tell me your stories, and see where you lead me. I would ask you to tell me:
What big experiences have shaped who you are today?
What challenges have you overcome and how did that contribute to who you are today?
And what have been the triumphs of your life so far?
What have you been passionate about learning in the past?
And then, I would probe around in your answers and ask you to think about the themes that your answers throw up. Do these themes point you in directions to look?
Step two: Do this simple, ‘back of the serviette’ process
I love this little process. It’s something I think we can all do, sitting at the dining table alone, or, with a friend or partner, brainstorming together. Take a piece of paper and draw up a quick table with four columns. Write four headings in the columns:
GIFTS
PASSIONS
VALUES
PURPOSE
Then start brainstorming.
Into the column marked “gifts” write down your skills that come naturally to you. These should be things you love doing, that feel instinctive. They might be skills you use everyday or skills you haven’t used for years.
Into the column marked “passions” write down the issues, and activities you are passionate about. This could be ANYTHING!
And “values”, write down things that you will never compromise on. These should be easy to answer. Mine are things like “I will only work and build friendships with ethical, trustworthy people”.
Then, in the fourth column, start brainstorming. This is where you need to think out ways all the things in the other columns combine into things you could work on, do or try. Your potential purposes could come from all different areas.
Once you have that list of potential purpose ideas, you then have some hard work to do. You need to start opening doors and looking for ways to try things and see if you gain a sense of direction from them.
Step three: Expect this to be a transition process not a simple fix (and I don’t mean that financially)
The process of retiring is social, emotional and financial. But, if you know and expect it to be a process that affects you the same way as any other significant life change or ‘transition’, you can look at it using William Bridges concept of ‘transitions in life’ which say there are three stages to a transition.
The ending: The ending where things in life come to an end, by choice or by force, and that creates a space. Sometimes you need time to grieve this ending, and to recognise where you are.
The middle zone: Then there’s the middle zone where you feel lost, and you go exploring for what might be right for you. As you move through the middle zone, you try things to see if they fit, and you explore what’s right for you.
The new beginnings: And, gradually, some things click and form the foundations for the next and final stage of the transition, the new beginnings. In new beginnings we are building stronger foundations in the areas that are going to be important in the future, and the next stage of our life, relationships and community. In retirement, this is an exciting time, because you become more self-aware of what you enjoy here, and you can lean in.
I took a few days off, enjoying some family time with all the generations of one side of our family. It got me thinking about how that is more possible than ever, with all of us active and healthy at this point of our lives. There was two grandparents in their 70s, five parents in their 40s and 50s and six teenage grandchildren, all staying with my inlaws in their new three bedroom lifestyle community house in Hervey Bay and nearby. This is something previous generations might never have been so active in being able to do. And in future generations there might even be able to be four generations on a fun local holiday together. I’m not sure we all stop and realise how cool this opportunity is and how the multi-generational family gathering opportunity is growing as we live longer lives.
Over the last week or two, if you listen to the radio you might have heard me on the airwaves. I’ve been doing some regular and occasional modern retirement segments on the ABC, in lots of wonderful locations, from Hobart, to the NSW Western Plains, the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane and in Sydney too! And, I jumped onto 3AW’s Brekky show in Melbourne yesterday with Jimmy Bartel as well! Lots of fun! Thanks to the hosts for making retirement topics part of your shows.
The first How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course is up to week five, and our participants are so happy! I am excited that we will be able to immediately launch the next program, with updates to the content, platform and some tweaks. So we’ve been re-filming some of the episodes this week with our filming crew onsite for two days, updating it with the latest pension, superannuation and ASFA data and getting things ready for relaunch. Not long now. Each week I’ve been hosting Q&A sessions with our very esteemed retirement industry experts and I’m loving them (the guests and the sessions as a whole!). So many questions pour in on our Live Zooms that we keep running to the last minute with everyone enjoying them and saying they wish they could have gone on longer.
Our Epic ‘Retirement Planning’ Survey has yielded some terrific insights, which I’m working through to build some really interesting recommendations for the superannuation and advice sectors and then I’ll be presenting them to the industry at events! I’ll share them with you when they’re ready! We have three $100 prize winners for our survey competition, which have been selected today and the winners have been notified by email. Many thanks to everyone who participated.
I’ve spent the last week in the Prime Time podcast studio recording some very interesting episodes that I am very excited for you to listen to. This week, on Thursday morning, I’ve got a ripper of an episode coming out with one of the world leaders in longevity, Dr Andrew Scott, the author of the bestselling book, The 100 Year Life. He’s releasing a new book this month on longevity and all the things we should know to live longer, better quality lives. The podcast comes out Thursday morning - look for it on your podcast app. So interesting!
Many thanks! Bec Wilson
Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker
The Prime Time podcast is growing quickly - thank you so much for telling your friends about it. This week’s episode with Dr Suzy Green about the science of happiness in the second half of life has been really popular! It seems we all want to find the joy in this stage of life a little more. It says something about what’s been missing from our lives in the rush into retirement. Haven’t heard it yet? Listen here.
The science of happiness and how to find it in the second half of life with Dr Suzy Green
What is happiness? What does it mean to be happy, and how do we know if we are genuinely happy or satisfied with our lives, particularly as we transition through midlife and approach the stages of pre-retirement and retirement? This period often marks significant changes, prompting a need for a deeper understanding of happiness and where to find it. So this week we went looking for that deeper understanding of happiness and fulfilment.
In this episode, I had the pleasure of chatting with Dr. Suzy Green, the founder and CEO of The Positivity Institute. Dr. Green, an expert in happiness, is a university researcher, psychologist, author, and speaker.
We talked all about the different types of happiness, exploring practical ways you can seek out more happiness and joy. And we discussed the challenges of transitions, and a powerful framework for getting through the tough times.
LISTEN HERE ON APPLE PODCASTS OR SPOTIFY PODCASTS
Hey Bec, I was an avid reader of your Sunday Age column and noticed you wrote a book: Epic Retirement, which I bought recently.
My husband and I are 52 this year, no kids, lots of super from well paid jobs.
I sat down last week and built our retirement plan after being inspired by your book. We have a financial planner who takes us through how much our super investments are growing which is nice, but I’ve never really known what it all really means in terms of retiring and retirement spending.
Well , I announced to my husband this week: “That’s it! Retirement is next year and this is THE HOW!”
It was so good that I didn’t quite believe it and I sent it to my financial planner to cross check my numbers. He was impressed and said it was all very accurate and well planned.
We can’t wait to start our EPIC Retirement!!!
Thanks 🙏 Regards Simone
Simone - you bloody legend! That’s why I do what I do! So you can do that! I’m so impressed, and very very proud of you!
If you have a letter or a question send it to me at bec@epicretirement.com.au
