You’ve heard the expression that someone is behaving “like a chicken with their head cut off.”

Have you ever seen a chicken after it’s had its head permanently separated from its body…? Not a pretty picture, I can assure you! It flops around in a crazy frenetic-looking way reminiscent of some wild, drug-induced dance, like might have been seen in a college dorm room on a Saturday night after sitting around a bong…listening to the Moody Blues!

Although it’s a somewhat gory metaphor (the chicken…not the bong), it’s an accurate rendition of how many of us live our lives.

We live in a somewhat crazy, potentially chaotic, world and it’s easy to get caught up in the belief that we need to stay constantly busy, productive, and “on the move” to show we are successful, important, and in the middle of it all!

And we need to do it all, and have it all, right now!

Many of us are running around from morning till night, frantically working to do…something.

But is our activity attached to any kind of conscious, intentional decision that has embedded within it a clear vision of where we are going, what results the activities we engage in will produce, and whether these are the results we really want?

Is it alright to sometimes do…nothing? I mean literally…nothing?

Perhaps slowing down long enough to think about these things might be a good idea…

And certainly working for a balance between doing something and doing nothing is a marvelous idea!

If not, we may run out of steam before we’re ready to.

And…we end up living no more mindfully than that proverbial chicken.

And remember…his head wasn’t even attached to his body!

When I talk with individuals about their retirement plans, I frequently get two common responses.

Some folks look at me with such fear you’d think I just asked them to jump off the Empire State Building to see if they can fly!

Others look at me with longing in their eyes…not longing for me, of course, but for the day when they can finally do whatever they want, rather than what a job, or the demands of a career, tell them they must do!

Unfortunately, either of these reactions indicate that a great number of people do not understand what the “new” retirement is all about.

It is not about sitting around doing nothing, and certainly not about playing shuffle board…do boomers even know what that is, or how to play it?

As much as many of you love the game of golf, or a rousing game of poker, or visiting grown children and grandchildren, you probably will not want to spend all of your time for the next 30 plus years with these activities alone!

Physical limitations may at some point interfere with the number of weekly games of golf you can play, or your golf buddies may be on a cruise, traveling to see their grandchildren, or heading to the top of the Empire State Building to get into heaven knows what kind of mischief! (Did that guy have wings strapped on his back!!!)

Poker is fun, but once you’ve taken all your friends’ money, or they’ve wised up to you and won’t play with you any more, then what!

And at some point, your kids will want you to leave and let them make their own mistakes with their own children without your help!

So what will you do then? Do you have a plan that’s more specific than, “I can always find something to do!”?

Maybe you can…and you will.

I hope so.

Because if not, you may find yourself in trouble…

Boredom, lack of purpose, isolation, and a poor self image, if you are no longer directly involved with  some wonderfully important career endeavor or with the colleagues who are still busy doing that wonderfully important work, can be significant stressors which can lead to depression and a general lack of interest in life.

This is not good. You really don’t want this to happen, do you?

If you are aware of what the retirement years can hold for you, and all the important components of life that you want to be sure are in place for that developmental transition, you will be in a much better position to enjoy retirement, whatever it looks like for you!

So…Ready? …Set? …Retire! …and Enjoy!

Many things can, and do, motivate us in our lives. We are motivated for different reasons and with different results. Often, however, we are unaware of the actual process of why we make the decisions we make in our lives.

When fear is the motivator, the decisions we make are not always the ones we would choose to make if motivated differently.

Let’s take a look at the process of fear based motivation.

When we are making decisions based on fear, we tend to be in defensive mode. We are often making the decision that feels the safest, not necessarily the best. We are making a decision based on short-term survival rather than long-term benefit.

It doesn’t matter whether we are actually in physical danger or not, our brain registers the threat as real, unless we wait long enough to process the situation and assess the actual danger, using the reasoning part of the brain rather than the primal brain.

Let’s review a basic concept of survivor behavior…

When we feel fear, we often react in one of three ways. We Fight (become defensive)…We Flee (avoidance & procrastination)…or We Freeze (Do nothing). We react in these ways without much conscious thought. In other words, we “react” instinctively, rather than thinking about it in a rational way. These quick decisions serve the purpose of increasing our odds of surviving some perceived threat.

The thing is, though…we don’t have many saber-tooth tigers to deal with in our every day lives anymore. There is far less actual danger than our reactive way of handling things might indicate.

We could probably take more time and think about our decisions. We could take a couple of deep breaths and sit quietly for a few moments. We could ask trusted advisers for information. We could give ourselves the time to determine whether we are actually in danger or not, and we could practice a more thoughtful, contemplative, long-term benefit approach to decision-making…with less fear, if we were willing to be more courageous.

This approach would be more encouraging, more empowering, and more directionally accurate than a knee-jerk reaction tends to be.

Our results would also be more positive. We would be more likely to create the kind of results we want to create.

These concepts apply when we are making financial decisions about retirement investing, and how, in general, we choose to spend, or not spend, money.

When we ask for, and receive, good advise and information from a trusted financial adviser, we are well served if we use that advise well and make courageous, wise, and thoughtful decisions regarding our finances and our investments.

This requires getting out of fear mode, and allowing ourselves the time to think about what makes good financial sense…and what part is fear-based and unnecessary to the decision making process.

When we are thinking about other decisions we make in our lives, the same principles apply.

Are we making decisions about who we will be in relationship with, and what kinds of activities we will be involved in, based on fear and an attempt to stay safe (not risk failure or rejection), or are we courageous in going for what we want in life, even if it is scary!

Are we staying in a career that is no longer satisfying, rather than risk doing something we really want to do?

Are we deciding not to retire because the unknown of not being gainfully employed, or employed in a different capacity, invokes too much fear, and “freezes” us from deciding on a different life course?

Good questions. These are questions worth asking, and answering, to allow us to move away from fear…and more fully into life!

Coach Char