by Joe Hearn | Mar 6, 2018 | Happiness, Lifestyle Design, Retirement
Retirement often involves making important decisions with incomplete information when the stakes are high. You won’t have everything figured out on Day 1. More likely, you’ll arrive at your ideal retirement through a process of trial and error. You’ll make mistakes. That’s unavoidable. The important thing is that you learn from them. How best to do that?
Ray Dalio is an investment legend on par with people like Warren Buffett. He owns Bridgewater, the largest hedge fund in the world. Ray has a saying:
Pain + Reflection = Progress
In other words, pain is a good instructor and a strong signal. According to Dalio, success is nice, but it just causes you to do more of the same. You don’t learn much from it. Pain, on the other hand, has a lot to teach you. Whenever you make a mistake about anything, you feel some sort of pain. There’s a message in that pain somewhere. It’s hard to see while you’re going through it, but if you reflect on it once it’s over, you’ll probably be able to see what that message is.
As you experiment with retirement, write down these pain points and think about them. What caused the pain? What should I learn from it? What would I do differently in the future? If you do that, you’ll come out with a principle that relates to the people, places, activities or philosophy of your retirement. That principle is the progress in the equation above. It’s the newfound wisdom that gets you a bit closer to your ideal life and retirement. The more you experiment, learn and iterate, the better your odds of having a happy, meaningful retirement. In some ways, you might even learn to enjoy the pain as an indication of progress. Again, Ray Dalio:
“Encountering pains and figuring out the lessons they were trying to give me became sort of a game to me. The more I played it, the better I got at it, the less painful those situations became, and the more rewarding the process of reflecting, developing principles, and then getting rewards for using those principles became. I learned to love my struggles, which I suppose is a healthy perspective to have…”
by Joe Hearn | Feb 19, 2018 | Health, Retirement
Memento Mori. In English it means: “Remember that you will die.”
This has been a tough couple of weeks for me. My mom died very unexpectedly after a brief illness. On January 29th, I met her for dinner to celebrate her 67th birthday. We had a wonderful time. On February 5th, she was hospitalized with what turned out to be a terrible infection. On February 9th, she was gone.
One week, we were talking, laughing and telling stories over a nice meal. The next week, in the small hours of the morning, I sat by her hospital bed, held her hand and told her I loved her as I watched her last heartbeat move weakly across the monitor. I don’t have the words to convey how jarringly painful that was.
Still, I’m grateful. Grateful to have had her as my mom. Grateful to have always had a wonderful relationship with her. Grateful to have made some new memories just a week before she died. And yes, grateful for the reminder of mortality. The Memento Mori. One of my favorite verses is Psalm 39:4.
“Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days;
let me know how fleeting my life is.”
I like that verse because I often need the reminder. I know I’m going to die, but I don’t always live like I believe it. Maybe some of you are guilty of that too. If so, consider this your reminder.
If you died today, would you go in peace without a single regret? Or would you, like most of us, feel bad about the things left undone or unsaid? The relationship that needs mending? The affairs that need to be put in order? Sit with those thoughts this week. Write them down. And then act. You know what you should do. So do I. The challenge is to make sure that knowing transitions into doing and believing becomes behaving. You and I have been given an amazing gift: Today. Use it wisely.
~ Joe
by Joe Hearn | Jan 26, 2018 | Happiness, Pursuits, Retirement
I recently played a game of travel roulette with my friends. We showed up at the airport at 5 am with no tickets and no plans and told the ticket agent we’d go anywhere warm. The only conditions were that the flight had to leave that morning and cost less than $500. After running through half a dozen potential destinations, we ended up with the last four seats on a direct flight to Phoenix. The trip couldn’t have gone better. We had a blast.
This post started out as a handful of lessons and takeaways from that experience. It included my thoughts on spontaneity, the declining cost of distance, the demystification of travel, the benefits of packing light, living a proactive life and allocating your resources based on your priorities. Then I erased all of that and instead decided to write about only one key takeaway: Relationships.
Many times during the trip, as we laughed and had fun, I thought to myself “It’s so great to do stuff like this.” After reflecting a bit more, however, that initial thought evolved into “It’s so great to have people to do stuff like this with.” In other words, the hero of the story isn’t the experience, it’s the people. The friendships.
In What makes a good life? I wrote about the Study of Adult Development that Harvard has been conducting for the last 80 years. The key finding of that study is that relationships and social connections are really, really good for us. Those with close relationships were happier, healthier and they lived longer than those who self-described as lonely or lacking friends.
Psychologist and author Susan Pinker has done research that resulted in similar conclusions. In her popular TED talk “The secret to living longer may be your social life” she discussed the importance of friends. She cited a study that attempted to answer the question “What reduces your chances of dying most?” You can probably guess where this is going. Here are the variables in the study ranked from least powerful impact on longevity to greatest: clean air, hypertension treatment, lean vs. overweight, exercise, cardiac treatment, flu vaccine, quit boozing, quit smoking, close relationships, social integration/interaction. Just like the Harvard study, this research shows that relationships are critical. Ms. Pinker went so far as to say that those who prioritize their face-to-face relationships over time create a biological force field against disease and decline.
Self-reflection
Now that we know how important relationships are, each of us should do a little self-examination and reflection. How many close friends do you have? Are you proactive in making and maintaining your friendships? How is your relationship with your spouse, children and other family? How much time, energy and money are you investing in relationships?
Application
All of this obviously has huge implications for your retirement. As I’ve said many times before, retirement is more than a math problem. Money is important, but so are relationships. Don’t take them for granted. They will affect how happy you are and how long you’ll live. Reflect on some practical ways that you can be more intentional with your relationships. Here are a few ideas:
- Focus on the little things. Small gestures can make a big difference. Send a card to say thank you or to let them know you appreciate them. Call to catch up.
- Look for ways to help. Bring a meal when a friend is sick. Be a shoulder to cry on when they’re going through a tough time.
- Organize activities. One way to strengthen bonds is through shared experiences and memories. Organize a book club. Arrange a movie night. Plan a trip.
- Be trustworthy and a good listener. Nothing will end a friendship faster than gossip, backbiting or a lack of empathy.
- Be quick to fix problems. Don’t let small issues fester. Admit when your wrong. Forgive when you’ve been wronged.
- Start a group. We have a close group of friends that we’ve been meeting with every Sunday night for the last 22 years. We had no kids when we started and now the kids outnumber us. We travel together, share meals together, laugh and cry together, pray for and support one another, and generally experience life together. We’ve been through the best and worst that life can throw at you and I wouldn’t trade them for the world. Having a friend is great. Having a group of friends is even better. Consider starting a group around shared interests, activities, life stage, beliefs or whatever.
- Lay the groundwork for retirement. If you’re planning on moving somewhere new in retirement, start visiting that place now to make new friends. Talk with current friends to see if they have any interest in landing there as well.
by Joe Hearn | Jan 12, 2018 | Pursuits, Travel
For a while I’ve wanted to show up at the airport with no plans, no luggage and no ticket and ask the agent to book me a flight somewhere. I think it would be a fun experiment. Travel roulette. So a few days ago, I sent this text to four of my friends:
To my surprise, three of them took me up on it. We’ll all be at the airport tomorrow morning trying to snag a last-minute seat somewhere interesting. I’ll try to post a few pictures or videos to the Intentional Retirement Facebook page to let you know how it’s going. Maybe it will be fun. Maybe it will be a colossal mistake. Either way it will be memorable.
Enjoy your weekend! And remember. Life is short. Be intentional.
~ Joe
by Joe Hearn | Jan 5, 2018 | Hobbies, Pursuits
Happy New Year! December is crazy busy in my line of work so I didn’t have much time to write, but the calendar has flipped, I’ve come up for air and I’m excited about 2018.
In past years I’ve written about my annual review process and how I set goals. You can read more about it here if you’re doing some 2018 planning of your own: Your plan for the New Year in 3 easy steps.
I’m a big believer in the benefits of reading so I usually have a reading goal each year. In 2017, my goal was to read every book, short story, poem and play by Ernest Hemingway. A few years ago, I set a goal to read 500 books between age 40 and 50.
I’m guessing many of you enjoy reading as well, so if you’re looking for a few book ideas for 2018, I created a page on Intentional Retirement with a list of everything I’ve read over the last five years. I’ll keep it updated going forward, so feel free to check back periodically. It contains a pretty eclectic mix, so there’s something for everyone. And if you have an idea or two for me, please send them my way.
As always, thanks for following along. Have a great weekend!
Joe
