Beyond Retirement

This is it! It's finally time to walk the talk!

My "day-job" is finished and I'm ready to head out on the road Beyond Retirement. Time for the journey to commence!

I hope you're going to join me...

Going forward, the main plan for my podcast is to track down people who have made new lives for themselves after hanging up the keys to whatever regular J-O-B they might have held in the past. I'm not looking for people who want to talk about how to make it big in the business world, or how to run their own company, necesssarily. I'm looking for people who are out there living life the best way they can - the ones who understand that yesterday is history and tomorrow may never come, so today is a gift (remember, that’s why it’s called the PRESENT) and they are making the most of each day they've got. Maybe they left their job because they had to, or maybe they wanted to, but probably they haven't really stopped working. They’ve just moved on to other activities.

I'll also continue with my little musings in between my guests... I thought it might be harder to find guests, now that I'm switching the focus a bit but so far there’s no shortage. We'll see how it goes. I'm planning to do some travelling, too, some house and pet sitting, and hopefully I'll meet a lot of interesting people along the way.

But... here we go! It's time to see if I can live up to my words.

Gary Grewal is a financial planner - but I decided to interview him anyway!

He has a website called Financial Fives and he's also the owner of a zero waste cardboard box rental company that he started while in university.

We didn't talk about his thoughts on financial preparedness for retirement, but rather about the other (maybe more) important aspects of life and how as we get older, we have more opportunities to reflect and be grateful for what we've got.

Gary believes that many people find themselves unsatisfied in retirement because they feel they've lost their purpose. They work so hard to be able to retire, without thinking about what life looks like afterwards.

He feels that we need to plan for that time in life while using it as a motivator. There is no better time to refocus on generosity and giving, volunteering your time for a cause you are passionate about, working on advocacy for social causes important to you, or helping plan community events.

Many of the things we take for granted throughout life, such as the protection of a park or revival of a festival, are put together by people who work on them outside of their job or in retirement. Research repeatedly confirms that we find fulfilment and happiness when we give our time and money to others, to causes, and work on something meaningful, rather than just putter around all day.

Find out more about Gary and what he stands for at https://financialfives.com/blog

Rick Psonak is the principal owner and lead practitioner at Synergy Prosthetics Research Center. He was a paratrooper in the army and a former college athlete. In addition to his training in prosthetics, Rick is a Human Potential Coach and Psychological Fitness Specialist and the founder of In Your Second Life. He is a frequent university lecturer and conference speaker on topics that include Microprocessor Prosthetics, Spiritual Life, Health, Fitness, Leadership, and Personal Mastery.

Rick's goal is to help people live full, happy lives by showing them how to be the lead character in their own story. He believes there's no point in floating through life being a secondary character to someone else's star performance. We all have something to give and something to gain from life and we should be doing our utmost to make that happen.

The best way to reach Rick is via email at: [email protected]

Accessibility is an important issue, especially as times continue to change and we are becoming more aware of the need to make accommodations for people with disabilities. Unfortunately hearing impairment is often overlooked when accommodations are being considered, because it's an invisible disability in most cases.

Janice Lintz is the founder and CEO of Hearing Access Innovations, which is dedicated to showing businesses, entertainment venues, and government departments around the world how to grow profits by improving access to their products and facilities for an ever-increasing audience of individuals with hearing impairments.

Janice has travelled extensively and has seen varying degrees of success in accommodations being made. The vast majority of business owners feel that adding access to their venues and businesses is an unnecessary cost because the audience that will be served is quite small. In reality, there are 360 million people worldwide with hearing impairments.

(14:30) With Hearing Access Innovations, Janice is spreading the word about the spectrum of hearing loss and how to accommodate people at all points on the spectrum. She emphasizes that effective communication is needed, and it involves three parts: visual, audio, and qualified interpretation (sign language). If any of these three parts is missing, communication will not be effective. Janice's daughter developed a worksheet to help explain the interrelationship of the three parts. https://janiceslintz.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/effectivecommunicationworksheet.pdf

To demonstrate the three-prong approach and how to use the worksheet, Janice offers a summary of the US Museums' hearing access: https://janiceslintz.files.wordpress.com/2021/08/effectivecommunicationatmuseums.pdf

(21:15) How to help increase accessibility and understanding of hearing loss in general:

• take the worksheet when you're going to a new venue and ask what accommodations are in place and what the venue is going to do to ensure all 3 parts are presented
• tell your audiologist you want a telecoil in your hearing aid, or you want it activated if it's already there. They can be installed after the fact; if the audiologist says no, find another audiologist!
• Complain with a Solution - make noise and let businesses know that you want/need this access.

Please reach out to Janice through either of these links:

https://janicelintz.com/

https://www.hearingaccess.com/

Myles Wakeham refers to himself as a contrarian. He's never followed the social mantra of college, work & retirement. He's lived all over the world and at the young age of 57, he and his wife are embarking on a new chapter in yet another country, retracing Myles' past and paying homage to the past world of music, to breathe new life into an age-old craft.

Myles has some key takeaways in his talk... you can find them at the following timestamps:

30:16 - What does the Average Joe, who isn’t independently wealthy and doesn’t have a passive income source, do when he reaches “retirement time”?

There’s no going back in time: if you didn’t start saving/investing in your 30s and just enjoyed life and floated along, there’s no golden ticket for you.

31:08 – Sometimes in life you have to make the most out of what you’ve got.

33:00 – You should have thought about your life as a marathon and not a sprint. There’s a perpetual nature that we have to live until the moment that our body gives out.

32:26 – He speaks of breaking life up into 4 quarters:

1. 1-20 yrs – Learning - to walk, talk, communicate, socialize & start getting an idea of who you are & what you’re about.
2. 20-40 yrs – Building – build a career, family, home, life,
3. 40-60 yrs – Optimization – take the skills and knowledge that you’ve acquired and use it to maximize the wealth that you have
4. 60-80 yrs – Waning – you just hope that you’ve done enough through your life to sustain you through the years when things start to deteriorate

Life is valuable – you have to take everything you can from every single moment, because you’ll never get that moment back again.

38:14 – there are things that come in sets – a universal concept of balance: Up & down, yin and yang, sunrise & sunset, waves go up and down in surfing

You can’t beat nature – learn to be synergistic – if you’re ahead of the wave and start paddling, it will pick you up and carry you.

Never buy something when it’s already upon you, never buy something that’s past you, look on the horizon for the next one, and engage well before it comes to you.

Practice the skill and you’ll do fine in any situation.

41:09 – The rich don’t have jobs.

Please connect with Myles at: https://www.beunconstrained.com