The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

Can learning from your parents' mistakes help you age gracefully? In his 50s Steven Petrow began a list of things he was observing that he vowed never to do when he became old. Now in his 60s, he has a different appreciation of his observations. Listen in to a fascinating conversation as Steven shares his humor and insights on making smarter choices to age gracefully.

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Bio

Steven Petrow is an award-winning journalist and book author who is best known for his Washington Post and New York Times essays on aging, health, and civility. He’s also an opinion columnist for USA Today,  where he writes about civil discourse and manners. Steven's 2019 TED Talk, “3 Ways to Practice Civility” has been viewed nearly two million times and translated into 16 languages.

Steven's new book is Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old. He is the author of five other books, the most recent of which is Steven Petrow’s Complete Gay & Lesbian Manners. He’s a much sought-after public speaker, and you’re likely to hear him when you stream NPR or one of your favorite  —  or least favorite  —  TV networks. Steven also served as the host and executive producer of "The Civilist," a podcast from Public Radio International and North Carolina Public Radio WUNC.

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For More on Steven Petrow

The Book: Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old: A Highly Judgmental, Unapologetically Honest Accounting of All the Things Our Elders Are Doing Wrong

Steven Petrow's Website

How To Age Gracefully  (The article mentioned by Jane Brody in The New York Times)

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Check out the video library to see what interests you.

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Wise Quotes

On Being a Perrenial

"There are many ideas that were good for a long time - and then they're not anymore. And then of course there are new ideas that come into vogue - and one of the new ideas that I talk about is this notion of being a perennial. So we're very divided by our generation. We have the Greatest Generation. We have the Boomers, Millennials, Gen X, Y, and Z. And in a way, those are divisions that keep us apart. And so I like this notion of being a perennial. Anybody can be a perennial, whether you're 25, 64 like we are, or 85. It's an attitude. And it's an attitude of being involved and curious and often having friends of different generations. So this is like a new behavior that we can start to adopt. That is very gratifying. I've had the experience several times, especially with multi-generational friends, but also I'm having younger folks really kind of keep me in the swim of what's happening in life. And I think that's important to all of us."

On Adapting

"The thing I saw most, especially I'll say with my Dad - and I think this is somewhat of a male condition. He was very independent, very stubborn. He always liked to do things his way, and he really did not want assistance in general. And he did not want his three kids to be providing any kind of help - I'll say it in air quotes. And we were very aware of the sort of family dynamic and the generational dynamic and did not want to be telling our father what to do. Both because we knew that that was futile and that that's really not how we were approaching these problems, especially when he was falling a lot. So we tried to give him tools and he rejected most of them. And then he continued to fall and he died. He died from a series of falls.

How can you get smarter about getting smarter? Our guest Elizabeth Ricker, author of Smarter Tomorrow, introduces us to neurohacks that can cognitive functioning. She explains her concept of scientific self-help and how to improve cognitive functioning through a variety of short exercises and experiments.

We discuss:

The story of her middle school math teacher

How neurohacking and scientific self-help work with how to improve cognitive functioning

What she learned from tracking her New Year’s Resolutions since 2011

What we need to know about cognitive functioning that may be different than we expect

The New IQ and the New EQ

Common Lifestyle Bottlenecks – and how they can be addressed and improve cognitive functioning

How Serious Brain Games can improve executive function

The MIND diet

How having an accountability partner can help

The key messages from her book Smarter Tomorrow

Elizabeth joins us from San Francisco.

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Bio

Elizabeth R. Ricker is the author of the new book, Smarter Tomorrow: How 15 Minutes of Neurohacking a Day Can Help You Work Better, Think Faster, and Get More Done

Her work has been featured globally, including in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, on SiriusXM radio, and on public broadcast TV in Europe.

She has given talks on cognitive enhancement and neurohacking across the US and overseas. She is a sought-after expert by Silicon Valley venture capital firms, technology startups, schools, and the Fortune 500. She runs the citizen neuroscience, DIY, and neurohacking organization, NeuroEducate, and her consulting and speaking work goes through Ricker Labs.

Ricker received her undergraduate degree in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from MIT and her graduate degree in Mind, Brain, and Education from Harvard. In college, she worked in the neuroscience lab of Nobel Prize winner Dr. Susumu Tonegawa. Ricker was also a nationally ranked athlete and class president-- the latter of which occasionally involved such serious duties as dressing up in a giant rodent costume to play Tim the Beaver, the MIT mascot.

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Wise Quotes

On Neurohacking

"I think before you dive into all the things that the media is going to tell you that are falling apart as you get older, I think it's really important to just start with the things that you are probably stronger at than you realize. This is a really important thing with neurohacking - to start with an understanding of where you're strong and then understand what your personal bottlenecks are so that you can personalize everything that you do."

On Scientific Self Help

"You can take a very scientific approach to your life and the things that seem kind of abstract and maybe not under your control, like life satisfaction or mental performance - these things seem uncontrollable. I think they seem like you're either born with them or fate seems to play a role and you just don't have control over them. And what I want to really introduce to people is that we actually have a lot of data, and we have this tool, which is self-experimentation, that can allow you to actually take control over it. And if it helps at all, when you look back at the number of Nobel prize winners who have won awards in medicine or physiology, a surprising percentage of them actually ran self-experiments in the exact area that they won the Nobel prize in. So you will actually be in pretty good company. This is not some [sci-fi] stuff. This is something that even very various data scientists have done themselves. So, [there's] no reason why you can't ask and approach things just like a Nobel prize winner."

On Neurohacking 

"...When you start your neurohacking,

Your "retirement" could be longer than your career. What if you reject the traditional version of retirement that your neighbors and your colleagues have in mind? What if instead, you design a new life around what matters most to you and yours? And what if you bring the same qualities that made you successful to your new post-career chapters?

Today's guests, Milledge and Patti Hart are the authors of The Resolutionist: Welcome To The Anti-Retirement Movement. The Harts are living their new life on their own terms, based on twelve Resolutions they developed that define a pathway to make this phase of life the best of their life. And you can apply ideas from their framework to do the same - and measure your progress - as you define it - along the way.

Milledge and Patti Hart join us from California.

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Wise Quotes

On The Anti-Retirement Movement

"This generation of people actually really relates to the word anti. We were anti-war, we're anti-aging or anti-racism. Whatever the word is, it doesn't mean that you're against it. It really means that you're trying to redefine it. And I think that's really why we chose the word anti-retirement to say: How do we get society to shift its thinking about retirement and put it in a new place? If you think about the work we've done with the Stanford Longevity center, we have added 30 years to our lifespan in the last century and that's all in retirement. And so how do we take an anti-retirement approach and say: We're not going to approach this in the same way that historically the world has approached retirement? And if you're anti-something, you're definitely pro-something else."

On Prioritizing Yourself

"It's important to me because it's something I'd never done before because you're at such a different place in life, where you are more in control of things. Things aren't being set up for you and done for you. I'm making certain that I now [have] no guilt around moving myself up the priority list. It's important for a lot of reasons. I think at this stage of life mental health, self-confidence, and physical health [are] obvious things that matter when you get to this stage of life. But for me, it was the guilt. I had to really deal with the guilt of saying it's okay for me today to spend today on me."

On Metrics for Your New Life

"We all have lived with scorecards, probably since you were five years old, right? You brought home your first report card from school - and then you find yourself at whatever age you retire. And now there's no scorecard. There's no year-end bonus. There is no raise. There's no promotion. There's no whatever your scorecard was, whatever units it was in. And so it is important to your self-confidence that you actually see yourself making progress, that you see yourself as relevant, that you see yourself as important, and that you see yourself as still accomplishing. But for each person, it's very different. One of the things Milledge and I talk about in our book is really pushing people to try to measure the unmeasurable because the things we have been measuring - wealth and bonuses and money and units of whatever you [tracked ] - are gone. Now, what's your weight? And how many miles did you run today? Those are easy to measure, but we really pushed ourselves to say: How do we measure the unmeasurable? And we did that by saying, What is our desired state? What's the desired outcome? Is it a level of happiness, a level of connectedness, a level of relevancy? What's the end state that you're trying to accomplish? And what moves you towards that and start measuring deeper in the funnel?... We all need to have a measurement system in life, but it does need to be developed around what is important to you."

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Bios

Patti Hart

The pandemic has been a catalyst for reflection on what matters most and what constitutes a good life today. For many, it's sparked a realization that there's much more to life than the traditional model of work and careers. But what's next for you? For those contemplating retiring, perhaps earlier than expected, it's an opportunity to redesign their lives and pivot to a phase with greater meaning and purpose. How are you approaching your second half of life and retiring? Uncertainity leads many people to approach it with trepidation. Michael Clinton, the author of the new book ROAR into the second half of your life (before it's too late!), asserts that there's a better way. We discuss his four-part process to help you take charge of your next phase.

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Bio

Michael Clinton is the former President and Publishing Director of Hearst Magazines and is currently the special media advisor to the CEO of the Hearst Corporation. He is also a writer and photographer who has traveled to over 120 countries. He has appeared in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Town and Country, O, the Oprah Magazine, and other national media.

Clinton is the Founder of Circle of Generosity, a nonprofit that grants random acts of kindness to those in need and serves on multiple nonprofit boards. His newest book, ROAR into the second half of your life (before it's too late!) is a manifesto on how to get the most out of your life experience in work, lifestyle, and relationships.

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Wise Quotes

On the acronym ROAR

"First of all, the awareness of if you're 50 and you're healthy today, you have a really good shot at living to be 90 - or a hundred. And the construct that we were handed by our parents - and by both government policy and corporations - is a very outdated construct. The days they were developed in were the days when the life expectancy quite honestly was in the early 60s. And so you'd check out of a job and you wouldn't live much longer. Well, all that's changed. So ROAR and the acronym that it stands for is designed to help people have that aha moment about this. So they are: Re-imagine yourself and be one of those "Re-Imagineers" before others do it for you, whether it is being laid off or pushed out or any of the above.

And re-imagining your favorite future, especially if you're going to have this long life arc, the O is own who you are. I like to call it a midlife awakening, not a midlife crisis because once you've lived 25 years, you know a lot about yourself. So use that awakening [to accept ]that you've made good decisions and bad decisions - just kind of own them and assess where you are right now.  But at the same time, own your numbers. Think about it - it's amazing to me, Joe, how many people I ask what's your blood pressure or your heart rate, and they're completely clueless. And that's not a good thing because as we live longer, we need to keep our health numbers and metrics in place with our financial numbers. We need to own our successes and our failures. So, own who you are, is a big part of this book, and what's next for you. A is Act now with this concept called life layering, which I hope we can get into and talk about. And then the final R is reassess your relationships, because when you're in midlife and you want to make a change in whatever part of your life you're talking about, you need the support of your family, your friends, your community, your colleagues. They're the ones who are going to help facilitate that. And so you gotta really have a clear, clear head as to who they are and who your posse will be to get you there. So it's this four-step process, which is in the book, which stands for ROAR."

On Being Person-Appropriate - Not Age-Appropriate

"We all are sort of wired to think about what a 50-plus life is supposed to be,

Achieving the financial security to retire is a big milestone. But you're not done. There's inner work to be done to move into this next phase of life. Retired psychotherapist and bestselling author Connie Zweig joins our retirement podcast to discuss her new book The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul - and her insights on how reflection and contemplation can be valuable practices in your transition.

We discuss:

How retirement can be a catalyst for an inner journey to reimagine life

What the words retire and yoga have in common

The obstacles often encountered on this inner journey - and what Shadow Work is

How an Identity Crisis following retirement is different from a Mid-life Crisis

Why letting go is important – and challenging

Her own journey in retiring as a therapist – and what it’s taught her

What she's learned from grandparenting

What an Elder is – and how one becomes one

How people can come to view retirement as a spiritual journey

The main message of her new book The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul

Connie joins us from California.

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Thank You

Thanks to our wise guests and loyal listeners The Retirement Wisdom Podcast is among the top 3% in popularity globally according to Listen Notes.

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Bio

Connie Zweig, Ph.D., is a retired therapist, co-author of Meeting the Shadow and Romancing the Shadow, author of Meeting the Shadow of Spirituality and a novel, A Moth to the Flame: The Life of Sufi Poet Rumi. Her new book, The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul, extends shadow-work into late life and teaches aging as a spiritual practice. Connie has been doing contemplative practices for 50 years. She is a wife and grandmother and was initiated as an Elder by Sage-ing International in 2017. After investing in all these roles, she is practicing the shift from role to soul.

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Wise Quotes

On Letting Go

"My framework in the book is that the shift from senior to Elder in late life is a rite of passage. And we don't have rites of passage for elders in our culture, right? It just doesn't exist. So there are three stages of every rite of passage - and the first stage is letting go. And that might mean letting go of outworn roles or attitudes, letting go of outworn beliefs, or self-images or relationships that don't work - or jobs, or finances, or goals of some kind. And so letting go at every stage of life is hard because as humans, we bond, and we get attached. And with our egos to try to control everything. But to become an Elder, we actually need to let go of the Ego's agenda and step into a different speed limit, a different pace of life, a different sense of flow. I call it from Obligation to Flow - and we need to let go of the past. A lot of people are clinging to the past, feel regret about the past, and need to give and receive forgiveness about the past. So there's a chapter about how to do the emotional work to help us let go of the past so that we can live fully in the present because many people don't know how to do that. They don't really know how to be here and enjoy it fully."

On Becoming an Elder

"I think this is very individual, but what I explore in the book is that everyone becomes a senior with a Medicare birthday, but becoming an elder is not an age. It's a stage. It requires intention and what I call inner work so that there's a certain level of self-knowledge and awareness and ways of relating and a desire to give to the common good. Some people are Activists Elders, and some are Creative Elders and some are Spiritual Elders. So we can transmit the knowledge of our lives in many different ways,

It's a blast to dream about your retirement. Freedom. Flexibility. Fun. Just like you see in the commercials and the brochures. But if you want to truly retire happy and lead a life of fulfillment, you'll need to prepare better. You'll want to go beyond the highlights and take a serious look at what your day-to-day life will really be like - and what it will be about.

Tony Hixon, author of the new book, Retirement Stepping Stones, joins our retirement podcast to share his experiences and insights on how you can prepare for the stumbling blocks that can arise in retirement -  and how you can find a new purpose after you leave the world full-time work.

We discuss:

The tragedy that forever changed how he sees retirement - and why he's on a mission to help people prepare differently

The most challenging stumbling blocks people face in retirement

The key solutions to those challenges

Why you should dream big about your retirement - but why you should look past your highlight reel version of it

How career burnout can get in the way of a great retirement

Why retirement isn't for everyone - and why you need a Plan B

How your legacy should be part of your retirement planning

Tony Hixon joins us from Ohio.

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Thanks to our wise guests and loyal listeners The Retirement Wisdom Podcast is among the top 3% in popularity globally according to Listen Notes.

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Wise Quotes

On Transitioning to Retirement 

"You retire one day and [on] the last day they throw you a party. Your email is still active and you get probably a hundred to three hundred emails. And then the party's over. The cake has been eaten. You had the weekend to kind of recoup and Monday morning rolls around. And you open up that email account. It's been deactivated. You switch to your personal email and there are only two [emails ] there, and both of them are junk. So it kind of messes with your mind. You're not quite sure what this new phase of life should look like. You've had the ideal version of what retirement will be based on all the commercials and the Americanization of what retirement is, but perhaps you haven't done the correct work on what you're retiring to. You certainly know what you're retiring from, but you don't necessarily have an idea of what you're retiring to. So that loss of meaning and purpose is certainly a stumbling block that we see many clients face in retirement. Just not knowing for sure if they're needed anymore."

 

On Purpose and Legacy

"However, we often encourage our clients to think more deeply about the kind of emotional impact they want to make on their family and their friends and their community. We ask them questions - and I'd ask your listeners these questions:

What lessons do you want to impart?

How do you want people to feel when you interact with them?

What do you want to be remembered for?

These questions are certainly as important - if not more so - than planning for the financial strategy to care for your loved ones. Remember you get to define your legacy. How you live each day builds the legacy that you want to leave behind. Don't be afraid to start living with purpose. It's never too late - or too early - to start."

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Bio

Tony Hixon, CIMA®, RFC® is the author of the new book Retirement Stepping Stones: Find Meaning, Live with Purpose, and Leave a Legacy.

Mr. Hixon is co-founder, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Compliance Officer of Hixon Zuercher Capital Management.  As Chief Operating Officer, Tony is responsible for overseeing the administration and compliance of the firm.  In addition to managing the firm’s operations,

What's more important than Wellness? You want a healthy portfolio when y0u retire, but most importantly, you want a healthy you. This Best of The Retirement Wisdom Podcast episode highlights valuable practical advice from our guests on wise moves to take charge of your wellness and fitness.

Listen to the full conversations:

John LaPuma, MD

Marta Zaraska

Kelli Harding, MD, MPH

Kelly McGonigal, PhD

BJ Fogg, PhD

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Thanks to our outstanding guests and loyal listeners, The Retirement Wisdom Podcast is ranked in the top 3% of podcasts globally in popularity according to Listen Notes.

Browse all 4 Seasons of our episodes here

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Related Retirement Blog Posts

A Diagnosis Leads to a Retirement Course Correction

Tiny Habits That Deliver Big Changes

Put the Bounce Back in Your Retirement

Because of the excellent writing of contributor Bev Bachel, The RW Blog was named as one of the Best Blogs to Read in 2021 by Blog Overview

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Take Charge

Ready to take charge of your wellness? It begins with building the right habits - by starting small - actually tiny. Schedule a free call with Joe Casey, a Certified Tiny Habits coach at Retirement Wisdom, about his 4-week one-on-one coaching program to build the habits you want.

Will you retire happy? After a long career, will your retirement life have variety and flexibility? And a diverse set of interests that you can build gradually & adjust?

Andy Robin explains how creating a Tapas Life can be the solution you're looking for.

Can you get stronger after 50? Strength training, done properly and safely, can bolster your wellness. It's a key component of an overall fitness plan. Our guest, Dave Durell, shares his experience on how to do it right.

Dave joins us from Florida.

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Are you ready to discover your new life?

Design Your New Life with a proven three-phase process to explore alternative versions of your future using the principles of design thinking. Schedule a call to learn how it can help you get unstuck & move forward.

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Bio

Dave Durell has formerly worked as a Strength and Conditioning Assistant with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a Strength and Conditioning Consultant to the Jacksonville Jaguars, and the Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach at Southeast Missouri State University. He has been published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and has written 2 books on strength training. He holds a Master’s Degree in Health Fitness Administration and is a Master Level Personal Trainer and a licensed Physical Therapist Assistant.

After turning 50, Dave started feeling the effects of age-related wear and tear on his body, just as many people do. Knowing he had to figure out how to change his own workouts to overcome these limitations, Dave called upon the knowledge and experience he had gained over 35+ years in personal training, athletic strength and conditioning, and physical therapy, and created the Stay Strong Forever program, a unique strength training system that is especially suited for those over 50.

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Wise Quotes

On Why You Need Strength Training

"Once we get into probably our forties or so, there's a physiological process called sarcopenia that begins to manifest itself. And it sticks with us for life. Sarcopenia is age-related muscle loss and experts estimate it causes us to lose around half a pound of muscle per year. On average, that's about five pounds of movement producing muscle tissue per decade. This would be like the engine in your car shrinking and losing horsepower every year. It's not a good thing. And it gets worse. Assuming we maintain the same eating habits throughout the years that lost muscle will be replaced by stored body fat."

On Recovery

"Strength training is going to give you the biggest bang for your buck time-wise and done properly. It requires very little time under 45 minutes, a couple of times a week. Another point is strength training is instrumental in reducing the risk of injuries. So people that regularly engage in sports-type activities, whether they're runners or they're in the local cycling club, or they play tennis, strength training is important to help make you more resistant to the injuries you might possibly inflict during those types of activities. So it's important for that reason. Of course, I'm not saying people should only do strength training and be sedentary the rest of the time. I'm a big believer that we rust out faster than we wear out. So I want everybody to be active, at least engaging in low moderate intensity, leisure activities or exercise on their non-strength training days."

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For More on Dave Durell

Website

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

The Joy of Movement – Kelly McGonigal

The Future You – Brian David Johnson

How to Make Healthy Lifestyle Choices – Alan Carpenter

Best of The Retirement Wisdom Podcast – On Successful Aging

Believe In Yourself & Try Something New – Carol Cooke

Tiny Habits Can Lead to Big Changes – BJ Fogg

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About Retirement Wisdom

Positive aging can bolster your retirement. It includes cultivating your mindset, your engagement, creativity, and gratitude. Author Stephanie Raffelock shares her insights on positive aging and explains how you can reclaim what you love.

Stephanie joins us from Austin, Texas.

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Are you ready to design your new life?

Our group program kicks off on September 24th.

It’s limited to 10 participants.

Learn more here.

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Wise Quotes

On Reflection

"There are these wonderful arcs in our life. We don't get a chance to reflect upon them when we're in the midst of them. When you're in your thirties and you find a way to make a mortgage and marriage and kids work, we don't really reflect on what that is. But I think when you get to be 70 years old, you can sit back and go, Wow, I did good. We both tried our best when I say we both. I'm thinking of my husband. So I think that's one of the gifts of growing older. I think another gift of growing older is that we don't have to be the center of attention anymore, not the way that we did in more youthful days. We can kind of sit back a little bit and become the observer and become the appreciator. ...That's part of the gift of aging that you can actually sit still long enough to ponder these things."

On Reclamation

"I also think that there's a period or an opportunity for reclamation. And what I mean by that is as we were growing up and becoming mature adults, there were things that we put aside because they just didn't fit into the responsibilities and obligations that we needed to run our lives. For example, my husband was a musician and a bass player and loved the bass. And yet during most of our marriage, he didn't touch the bass, but then we hit retirement years and suddenly he started playing the bass. Again, he reclaimed that for himself and the music keeps him mentally young and because of the magic of the internet he can play with any bands now online, he can go online and take online courses in the bass. And so there's this great period of reclamation to you. We can reclaim those things. I think too that creativity is something that we can embrace in older years. We can give ourselves to the creative endeavor without having to worry about the accolades of fame and fortune around our art, our master gardening, our expert cooking, our writing. We can just do those things for the sake of creating and for the sake of art. And that definitely keeps us feeling, I think, vibrant and younger and gives us a sense of purposefulness in our life."

On Creativity

"I think it's a matter of surrendering what is it that you love to do that makes things, That can be master gardening, that can be music. It can be art, it can be any of those things. And I don't think we're as judgmental of ourselves at this phase of life as we were in our youth. So it doesn't really matter what the picture looks like. You're not trying to get into the Met. It's just a matter of giving yourself to the process. It's the process of creativity that I think speaks to our brain and our heart."

On Power

"I think the big thing that we learned from women is that the word power means something different to women. And I think that as a culture, men and women have to redefine power for meaning more than it currently does. Power has been traditionally a male word. Men have power over something. It's a warrior kind of word. Power means I can do what I want. I can take this from you. Power is for winners, that kind of power. When women talk about power, it's more the sense of knowing themselves, standing in the knowledge of self, and approaching the world from a place that is more heart-oriented. Now, I don't believe that men have to become like women or that women have to become like men.