Thriving in retirement

Intro Speaker:  

Hello, and welcome to Matters Beyond Wealth with your host, Leanne Kaufman, president and CEO of RBC Royal Trust. For most of us, talking about subjects like aging, late life, and estate planning isn’t easy. That’s why we’re going to help get the conversation started on this podcast while benefiting from the insights and expertise of some of the country’s top experts. We want to bring you information today that will help to protect you and your family in the future. Now, here’s your host, Leanne.

Leanne Kaufman:

We all know that our demographics are shifting and Canadians are living longer than ever before. We’ve mentioned before on this podcast that one of the fastest growing populations are the centenarians, the people over the age of 100. This means many of us will live as long or possibly longer in retirement as we did in our working years. We often idealize retirement as this time with more freedom, more leisure, but this is only part of the story, particularly for those whose career forms a significant part of their identity and purpose. There’s a big emotional side to retirement and what we consider to be our third phase of life.

Hello, I’m Leanne Kaufman and welcome to RBC Wealth Management Canada’s Matters Beyond Wealth. With me today is Dr. Shaun Murphy, a retired Organizational Psychologist and Management Consultant. He has 30 year’s experience coaching senior executives in multinational companies. In his own retirement, Sean has transitioned his work and conducts workshops and coaching that focuses on six key ingredients to a happy retirement called, “Thriving in the Third Stage of Life.”

Shaun, thanks for being here with me today to talk about how to thrive in retirement and why this matters beyond wealth.

Shaun Murphy:

Thank you, Leanne. It’s a genuine pleasure to be here.

Leanne Kaufman:

So, as I just mentioned in introducing you, you evolved your own business and practice, and maybe you don’t call it a retirement, but you’ve changed from becoming an executive coach for C-suite executives to becoming effectively a retirement coach. So, what made you believe that to be the right move at this stage of your life?

Shaun Murphy:

Well, throughout my career, I got to know the inner lives of senior executives and the complexity of that life, the stress, the pressures, as well as the satisfactions and the joys of it. As some of my clients started approaching retirement, our conversations took a different turn. They and their friends and their peers became very curious about, “What is it that I’m going to face in this next step?” And, “Do you have any insights into that? You’ve been very helpful as a confidant talking about our lives so far. What have you got to offer on this next new stage?”

Then I started looking at my own life and thinking, gee, is this a signal that I’m getting that it might be the right time for me to think about: so, Shaun, where are you going with this? And it fit together, it was the right time to make a transition myself. I felt if I had stayed in the corporate world, in fact, the world would pass me by and I would become stale-dated in the way the world was moving.

So, I thought this is a great opportunity. I will practice being a retirement coach with the very clients that I’ve worked with as senior executives through their careers, and it’s worked out very well. I feel like now I have a new path and a way of continuing to make a contribution using what I’ve learned over time and hopefully through this process I can continue to pursue my vision and hopefully age gracefully.

Leanne Kaufman:

It sounds like a very organic and natural evolution, but I’m sure it’s one that came with certain emotions. And I imagine there’s also a lot of emotions that you see in those that you’re coaching through the transition. Give us a sense of some of these emotional realities that this transition brings.

Shaun Murphy:

Yeah, that’s so true Leanne, and I divide these into two sections, the positive ones and some of the negative ones.

The positive ones are probably no surprise to anyone.

• There’ll be things like freedom immediately, right? Freedom from the pressure, the schedule, the intense expectations, and the drive. So that sense of freedom can be exhilarating for people. They say, “This is wonderful! Retirement is just what I hoped for.”
• Along with that, some other positive emotions like gratitude—say, “What a career I’ve had. I look back on this, I’ve accomplished things I wanted to accomplish. Done more than I thought I could do. And I feel like people are proud of me, too—the people close to me for the things that I’ve accomplished. I have a lot of gratitude for that.”
• Then the third one would be a sense of relief. Somebody else is carrying the load. Every time the phone rings or I check my email, I don’t have to be concerned that there’s something upsetting that’s suddenly going to hit my desk and everything else has to change to meet this new priority. So, what a relief it is to have that peace of mind that now it’s not on me.

Those are the positive ones.

The negative ones come as a bit of a surprise to people. Many people think that retirement is going to be a lifelong vacation—this is great—and it will go on forever.

• So, here’s some experience, is people start feeling a sense of loss. One fellow told me, “Yesterday I was the center of attention. Today I’m just an old guy walking his dog.” This for him, was disappointing. So, loss of prestige, loss of deference, loss of stimulation from the role as well. We get so much drawn from us in these senior jobs and it’s exciting, it’s demanding, and you’re on your game. So, loss is a big one.
• Disorientation. What do I do now? There’s nothing drawing me. There isn’t a strategic plan to guide me. What should I do? Disorientation.
• And another one, a deeper one too, is loneliness. Suddenly the days are quiet. I don’t have that exciting intelligent team around me. Who do I talk to and what do I talk to them about? How do I stay relevant?
• A vulnerability comes with that too. A sense of, “Gee, I don’t have control over many things anymore.” And that can lead to other kinds of ruminations around, vulnerability. What about my health? What about my mental stimulation? Am I on some kind of a slide now?
• And another one that caps the others, caps all of them I think, is a sense, an insidious sense of shame. That I’ve got so many great things in my life, I shouldn’t be having these negative feelings. People don’t want to hear about this, I don’t want to hear about it. This can become almost a dome of silence. Now I’m not allowed to talk about these other things, and it can create a deeper sense of loneliness. So that can get complicated.

Now, I want to emphasize that not everybody has this kind of experience. Most people enjoy their retirement. Most people on the surveys that are done saying, “I like retirement. Retirement is great. I enjoy it very much.” But a significant percentage of people, and it seems to be correlated with people who deeply identify with their job, they have a harder time than people who say, “Am I ever glad to be out of that, I never really liked it. It wasn’t me,” etcetera. You can see how much easier that might be. But when it’s in your heart and you give your all, all your time, your care, your greatest intellectual talents to it, it’s a big loss—there are these other negative emotions that arise.

Leanne Kaufman:

I think that’s a great segue into the next thing I want to ask you about because we know we can now live 30 years or longer in quote unquote retirement, if that phrase is even going to stay en vogue. Our friends at the MITH lab down in Cambridge, Massachusetts, they talk about retirement, this phase being like another entire adult life.

And so, what you’ve been talking about in the conversation about emotions, and particularly when you love your job and it’s such a part of your identity. How important are you seeing the sense of, and I’m going to put it in air quotes here, purpose in retirement becoming?

Shaun Murphy:

Yes, I talk about it in terms of purpose and meaning, and it really is foundational at the micro and the macro level.

My old dad lived to be a wise, happy 95-year-old. He used to say, “You have to find a purpose to get up in the morning.” I thought that’s an interesting start, right? What motivates you to get moving? What’s behind your drive and thirst for life?

And some of the background people might find interesting—this is Viktor Frankl’s famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning. He outlines how people in the deepest suffering if they can find some meaning in it, they can do it. Where there is a why, the how is bearable. And people need, I believe, a sense of meaning and purpose as a foundation for all their meaningful actions, for all their efforts. Without that, it just doesn’t amount to much. It doesn’t seem worth the struggle.

In contrast to Viktor Frankl, people often thought that Freud’s dictum that were driven by the pleasure principle was the reigning factor in human behavior. But it turns out that a pleasure principle is like only eating dessert, in my view. That becomes tedious fairly quickly, right? And more of it doesn’t make it better. So, people need a struggle and struggling for a purpose is one of the key activities, the key quests that will make this next 30 years feel worthwhile.

And it may sound grand and global when we talk about this, but it can actually be motivating and modest. Such things as being involved with your local community. Bringing happiness to your circle of loved ones. But it’s not the purpose itself, it’s the fact that it’s your purpose, that it’s meaningful to you becomes the answer.

Leanne Kaufman:

Yeah, I think that’s great advice and probably not something that we spend a lot of time thinking about when we’re doing our quote unquote retirement planning.

So, what kind of advice are you giving to these high-functioning, often high-powered super busy people who are approaching this stage where a lot of that might go away?

Shaun Murphy:

Yes, there’s several things I have for them.

The first one is take a break and let the dust settle. You don’t have to answer all of this right away. Just don’t take it on the way you may normally take on a project and say, “I’m going to see this one done here and in the next month I’m going to have the rest of my life figured out.” I say, “No, give it some time. Let things settle. Let your heart and your emotions, and the changes come to some—[when it’s] a little more quiet. Let’s put it that way.

Take some time out for reflection. This might be the greatest opportunity since adolescence to redesign your life. It’s a tremendous opportunity to think through some of the things that you may have left behind. Carl Jung used to say that as we get older, the things we left behind, the desires, the dreams we left behind in our youth, come whispering to us in our later years. If we were quiet and listen to it a little bit. I know one fellow, he said, “I used to love doing art. I haven’t had the time and I’m going to start trying that again.” And that became so fulfilling. He found emotional expression that felt so rich in his life that he could share with others and didn’t call himself an artist right away, but he grew into it. And that was one of the things that came to him, again, just by taking some time for reflection.

The other suggestion I have is engage others in your quest. Don’t leave your family out of it, invite them in. Talk to your spouse and whoever’s close to you about what you’re going through. Don’t be silenced by those difficult emotions. Share them and people may share back their own difficulties with you. And that goes along with the idea of practice being open and allow yourself to be vulnerable with the ones you trust. And this will nurture the quality of relationships. Bring forward that sense of being a caring human being.

One other piece of advice is nurture your mental and physical health as much as your wealth. Pay attention to learning to manage the stress. Expand your social circle. Try some new things, some things you’ve never done before, maybe something that’s a little bit difficult or scary. And like your grandmother’s advice, eat healthy food and get a good night’s sleep, and don’t forget to get some exercise.

Yeah, my beginning advice is around that. And of course over the years I’ve developed some techniques for trying to enhance that advice and make it more concrete.

Leanne Kaufman:

Well, I mean, great advice for aging well too, right? In addition to all the things around purpose that just, I think it’s hard to talk about how we want to live our best lives if we’re not feeling healthy and doing it.

Are there any other trends or things that you’re seeing maybe that surprised you as you’ve engaged in this work and with your new client base?

Shaun Murphy:

Well, one of the things that is becoming apparent is what some folks are calling a silver tsunami, right? The baby boomers are moving into this stage of life, and it really is like a tidal wave of people entering a phase where they talk about retirement, but retirement is not what it used to be.

So, this cohort of baby boomers, as they’ve changed so many social conventions through the decades, are now changing definitions of retirement. And certainly challenging ageist notions of how should you behave at a certain age. When people would say, perhaps, “Why don’t you act your age?” What does that mean anymore to people? It’s become a new world in that regard.

So, we see organizations and academic departments, volunteer groups, media voices arising like: Zoomer Magazine, another group called Booming Encore, Dr. Joe at MIT as you’ve mentioned, and CARP, the Canadian Association of Retired Persons—very active—and the enormous number of boomer YouTubers offering suggestions about what do we do with these next years. I think that will only grow.

And then so many books now and great books out there. Now, some of my favorites, I wanted to mention:

• How To Retire Happy, Wild and Free by Ernie Zelinksi. What a good book. It’s such an inspiring read and brings a good sense of humor to this whole thing, which can sound kind of tough. Retirement has that connotation, doesn’t it of resignation, etcetera?
• Another one called, Retirement Heaven or Hell by Mike Drak. Another great read, so sensible and encouraging.
• And the last one, I just love it is, How To Retire and Not Die by Gary Sirak. Also gets right to the point, doesn’t it?

There’s a large cohort of elders that is out of balance in some ways with the number of young people in the world who are there to support them. So, we’re moving into an age when aging people need to be more independent. They’re expected to be, and they’ll have to be. So, some responses to that are the rise of personal robots and personal robotic companions. I think this is going to become quite normal in time, and I think it’ll become a great push for self-driving cars when seniors don’t feel safe on the road anymore.

Leanne Kaufman:

It already happens in Japan.

Shaun Murphy:

Happens in Japan right now.

Leanne Kaufman:

Interesting, interesting concept. I haven’t seen much use in them in Canada yet, but I’m sure it’s not far down the path.

Shaun Murphy:

Yet, I think is the word, yeah.

Leanne Kaufman:

Yet, yeah, exactly. Well, that’s great. Shaun, it’s been so interesting talking to you, and I think we could go deeper on a lot of these topics, but in the interest of time for our listeners, if you hope they remember just one key thing out of our conversation today, what would that be?

Shaun Murphy:

Well, one of my favorite quotes is Yogi Berra when he said, “The future ain’t what it used to be.” I like to say now, “Retirement ain’t what it used to be. What are you going to do with it?”

Leanne Kaufman:

Yeah, great question, and we do need to think differently about it.

Well, thank you, Shaun, so much for joining me today to talk about really thriving in retirement. Thinking about it differently, “it ain’t what it used to be,” and why this all matters beyond wealth.

Shaun Murphy:

Thank you, Leanne.

Leanne Kaufman:

You can find out more about Dr. Shaun Murphy at, sdmurphy.com, or on LinkedIn.

If you enjoyed this episode and you’d like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review.

Until next time, I’m Leanne Kaufman. Thank you for joining us.

Outro speaker:

Whether you are planning for your own estate, the needs of your family or business, or you are an executor for a loved one’s estate, we can help guide you, simplify the complex, and support your life’s vision. Partner with RBC Royal Trust and ensure your legacy will thrive for generations to come. Leave a legacy, not a burden™. Visit rbc.com/royaltrust.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Matters Beyond Wealth. If you would like more information about RBC Royal Trust, please visit our website at rbc.com/royaltrust.