Retirement can be Exciting and Rewarding or full of Anxiety and Uncertainty
With millions of baby boomers approaching retirement and what that transition will mean to their lives. Chris Fortune, who is a trained
executive and leadership coach and Wayne Swift, who is a
business and personal coach refer to that period of one's life as the "bonus
years."
two coaches in Victoria have teamed up to help individuals get in touch with
how they will spend the next thirty to forty years of their lives.
At the beginning of the 20th century few
people lived until 65, but now that the life expectancy is an average 74, with many
more living well into their eighties and nineties, some people will end up being
retired for as long as they worked in their original career. Swift says his own father
just turned ninety-four and one can only wonder
if he knew he was going to live for another thirty to forty years how that time
would have been spent.
For many people, retirement is a destination they have
longed to reach for many years, anticipating those extended vacations, golfing
or fishing whenever they want and days without schedules or bosses. Swift quotes
a friend who sold her business at fifty-one because she was exhausted and felt
she had had enough. After an extended vacation she realized that all that she
needed was a vacation and not retirement at all. Still others he has known,
ended up returning to work because there was far too much unstructured time in
their life. “Leisure and endless busyness can actually become your
job if it occupies your whole day,” says Fortune, but is that what you want out of life and to what end? The question is: "what is right for you; what gives your life meaning and purpose?"
Many
people spend years putting together a retirement nest egg so that they can be
comfortable in their retirement only to find that when they actually do retire
there is far more missing in their life than just the paycheque. Chris and
Wayne feel that, in addition to the time people spend
on the financial aspects of retirement, equal time should be spent on the
emotional and psychological issues. “As
we live longer and stay healthier, we need to look at those bonus years in
terms of personal growth and renewal, and as a time to live
out those dreams that were not possible earlier," says Swift.
Chris and Wayne decided to partner
up over the past few months as they both shared the desire to help and support
individuals who find themselves in their late forties or fifties wondering what
to do with the rest of their. They now
refer to themselves as retirement lifestyle coaches, as most of their prospective
clients have no intention of retiring or are already retired and want to create
some deeper meaning in their retirement years. "Retirement renewal is an appropriate term, " says Fortune, "because the generation now looking to retire has no intention of being marginalized, but wants to rejuvenate themselves and follow their dreams.”
Chris and Wayne are planning to be
much more visable in the next few months, doing workshops and speaking engagements
around the city to help educate and coach those individuals, who are
either retired or contemplating retirement in the next few years, on how to
achieve retirement success. “Retirement,” Swift adds, “has absolutely nothing
to do with age, as it can be an option for a person at any age, based on his or
her financial position.”
Wayne now uses his
thirty-five years’ business expertise to help and support those individuals who
want to open their dream business as a retirement career. Chris, on the other hand, was downsized as an adult educator a couple of years ago and is using his
background in education and training as a leadership and executive coach to work with individuals wanting to spend
their retirement career pursuing further education or in community leadership roles. As a
partnership, Fortune and Swift feel they are ideally suited to helping people
make the transition from past career occupations to retirement careers, be it opening their dream business, working with non-profit
organizations, or achieving their goal as a mature student.
In 1990, Wayne retired form twenty years in the
corporate world and spent about four years reacquainting himself with his
family. Although he says that this was a very important time of his life and he
would not change it if he had it to do over again, in 1995 he and
his wife opened a B & B in Harrison Hot Springs as a retirement business.
After almost ten years as innkeepers, they sold the inn and moved to Victoria.
If you are having some reservations
about retirement or have recently retired and it is not
going as you had planned, your first contact with this retirement
coaching team may involve taking a Retirement Success Profile [RSP] assessment
that Fortune and Swift are certified to administer.
This RSP assessment will identify exactly how well you are
positioned for retirement in terms of your whole-life needs and expectations.
You can then do the necessary reading or personal development work
required to ensure success on your own or you can speed up the process by working with a retirement coach to help
you work through the transition. Fortune and Swift, both fast becoming
known as “the retirement guys” offer both individual and group coaching
sessions to help individuals establish clarity and success in their bonus
retirement and renewal years.
