Retiree Rebels: Ditch the Rocking Chair!

Do you wake up in the morning feeling like you have an important role to play in the grand scheme of things? During those early months of retirement, folks often try to figure out what their purpose is now that they're not working. They wonder if they matter.

Mary Helen views mattering through the lens of popular culture and the literature of transitions. She even shares a recipe on mattering you just might want to try.

The quote is from the 1940s, said by the incomparable Bette Davis, and she was right, "Growing Older is NOT for Sissies." But nowadays it's true of retirement as well. In this Kitchen Table Talk, Mary Helen and Carol talk about the stress and tensions that come with retirement today, and how acknowledging the difficulties and planning for them can make us stronger.

Joy Cardin, host of the Wisconsin Public Radio Ideas Network program, The Joy Cardin Show interviewed the Retiree Rebels co-founders August 7, 2017.

Retirement may be a time for taking it easy after a lot of hard work during the career. However, instead of enjoying leisure, some may find themselves bored. We talk with guests from the podcast, RetireeRebels.com, about the effects of boredom.

Thanks to: Wisconsin Public Radio, © Copyright 2017, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.

At age 74, Ellen Millar thought her life was over. Her physical problems had stolen her energy, her mobility, and her quality of life. Then she took her first yoga class. At age 78, Ellen is now a yoga teacher instructing other students in "The Wonder of Yoga," the name of her new business. She teaches at Perennial Yoga Studio in Fitchburg, WI as well as traveling around in her "yoga-mobile" to area senior facilities sharing the practice that turned her life around and changed her perspective on aging.

For the nearly and newly retired, you don't need another to-do-list hanging over your head. You're retired.

Mary Helen proposes that instead of that bucket list of things to do before you die, you change your mindset and become curious.

She offers five great tips on keeping your mindset flexible and being as curious as a 5-year old. Change that old adage about curiosity killing the cat into curiosity keeps retirement amazing.

What do you do when your life and all your plans for the future explode? Any number of things can happen, an accident, a death in the family, job loss or retirement. For Jerry Huffman, it was a stroke. At age 55, Jerry was forced to reinvent who he was and how to make a living. Now six years later, he sat down with Mary Helen and Carol to talk about the terror as well as the surprising gifts of this unplanned and dramatic pivot in his life.

How do you define time well spent? It is an individual judgement call for each of us. As Mary Helen and Carol discovered, how we define "time well spent" can be a great help in figuring out what we want to do during our bonus years.

When we know what activities are satisfying, and feel like time well spent, then we have a measuring cup for what makes us happy.

Mary Helen talks of the remembering we need to do in retirement to help ourselves and our families continue to understand the legacy we will leave.

Using her favorite holiday of July 4th she shows how remembering can make our past take focus in telling our stories.

But over and over again? Unfortunately, yes. As Carol Larson recently found out –much to her disappointment.

Retirement is really a transition. Mary Helen reviews her five tips that help to create your exit strategy from the workplace and lead to stepping into your life.

From planning to reinvention each of the five steps provides you options for reaching the position as CEO of your life.