The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

What retirement regrets lie ahead? You can learn a lot from other people’s experiences and avoid some retirement regrets that have derailed others. Our guest, Noah Sheidlower of Business Insider, joins us to discuss what he learned from a recent series on retirement regrets he and his colleagues reported. Noah Sheidlower joins us from New York. ______________________ Bio Noah Sheidlower is an economy reporter with Business Insider. He joined in June 2023 and covers retirement, immigration, and employment trends. Noah led a 17-story retirement series on regrets older Americans have about their lives and worked on a video about what six older Americans would tell their younger selves. He led an eight-month story about how eight families benefited from basic income initiatives. He has also reported extensively on how Americans have navigated unemployment, what compels Americans to move, and how mass deportations could impact the economy. He has appeared on SiriusXM Business Radio and CBS News to discuss his reporting. Before joining Business Insider, Noah received his Bachelor’s in Sociology and English from Columbia University. Noah has covered the restaurant industry, transportation, retail, and markets for CNBC, NBC News, CNN, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. ____________________ Podcast Conversations You May Like The Good Life – Marc Schulz Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You – Teresa Amabile The New Happy – Stephanie Harrison _____________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. Connect on LinkedIn ______________________ Wise Quotes On Meaning & Purpose “…we heard from a lot of people who kept mentioning meaning and purpose. This is something that we have heard many, many times from people saying, even though I retired, even though I stopped my 9 to 5 job, I still have found purpose, whether it was volunteering, whether it was going back to work part time, whether it was finding some kind of project in the home. We heard from a lot of people who said that they have worked on interior decorating projects or have built homes completely anew. And then we heard from a lot of people who said that focusing on health was a big one. You don’t even want to know how many 80 and 90 year olds I talked to who said I go to the gym every day. They make the trek to go to the gym, run a mile around the track every day. So definitely there were plenty of silver linings.” On Professional Regrets “We heard a lot of professional regrets. We heard from people who said, I did not maintain my professional connections enough. So I had a layoff when I was 60. I couldn’t quite retire. And well, my resume is not updated. My skill sets aren’t up to date. What do I do? And that’s another thing that I heavily report on it is older Americans in the workforce. And we’ve noticed from a lot of people saying I’ve applied to 500, a thousand jobs.” On Happiness in Retirement “…people who said that they worked very low paying jobs throughout their career and have not a lot of money in their retirement and are actually very content, probably a lot happier than most people in retirement. And that was just shocking for me to hear at least seeing that my grandparents, my grandparents had very successful careers and they said, well, my friends who weren’t as successful during their careers are nowhere near as happy as I am.” On Purpose in Retirement “…purpose seemed to be a guiding principle for a lot of these people. Obviously not everyone was equipped to retire, but for the people who were lucky enough to have the financial resources to have successful retirements, one of the main things that they preached was I discovered my purpose. I found meaning, and it wasn’t in ways that you would potentially expect. It was a lot of people saying, Well, I’m poor and I’m relying on Social Security, but my purpose is caring for my dog or seeing my grandchildren. We talked to people who said my purpose was going back to work. We talked to a woman who worked and ran a winery for much of her career and then was like Well, I can’t do this anymore. It’s too taxing on me. So, I’m going to be my village’s trustee. And so, people taking more of those types of civic positions. We heard from people who said, Well, I’m not going to retire. I’m just going to keep working and working and working. We talked to somebody who’s 87 and is still going to business meetings in Boston and is still putting on suits and ties to go talk to people and have coffee chats. And he was saying, Well, my brain’s a muscle. I don’t need my brain to atrophy. I don’t need to be sitting and withering away.”    

This podcast covers the non-financial aspects of planning for retirement. But make no mistake – you have to get your money right. Lane Martinsen is the author of 5W Retirement Blueprint: Maximize your Retirement Income through Holistic Planning, which describes his approach of holistic retirement planning. Lane Martinsen joins us from Arizona. ______________________ Bio Lane G. Martinsen is a Certified Financial Fiduciary®, an Investment Advisor Representative, and a Retirement Income Certified Professional (RICP®). Lane is the Principal of Martinsen Wealth Management, LLC located in Tempe, Arizona. Lane is an Ed Slott Elite IRA Advisor and a member of the National Ethics Association (NEA). Lane has a diverse background within the financial services industry that first started in 1988. In addition to serving his own clients, Lane has trained and mentored hundreds of other financial advisors from all parts of the country. Lane id the author of 5W Retirement Blueprint: Maximize your Retirement Income through Holistic Planning and of the Amazon bestselling book  The Holistic Retirement Planning Revolution. He’s also the host of the popular educational YouTube channel The Financial Fast Lane. Lane and his wife Tara met in college and recently celebrated their 31st anniversary. They have 5 children and 6 grandchildren. In 2010 (before any grandchildren were born) they fulfilled a dream to live with their kids in a foreign country. Lane and his family lived near the beach at Playa Conchal in beautiful Costa Rica for one year 2010-2011. During this time they formed many treasured memories and were able to provide humanitarian services to the local Tico people that they grew to love deeply. ________________________ For More on Lane Martinsen 5W Retirement Blueprint: Maximize your Retirement Income through Holistic Planning The Financial Fast Lane You Tube Channel Martinsen Wealth Management _____________________ Podcast Conversations You May Like Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You – Teresa Amabile How to Retire – Christine Benz The Key Decisions for Retirement Success – Wade Pfau _____________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. Connect on LinkedIn _____________________ Wise Quotes On Holistic Retirement Planning “Holistic planning is not traditional. Most Financial Planning is kind of transactional in nature and it’s specific to a certain transaction or a certain goal. But when you when it comes to retirement planning and we’re going to plan for decades, right? The quality of the planning becomes much more important and holistic planning is taking in all the aspects. So it’s certainly much more than investing right? You’re looking at the tax implications over time,  healthcare, and will my money run out? The five W’s are the five key areas of wealth management so it’s it includes investment planning, it includes income planning, tax planning, health care planning and legacy or estate planning. So there’s a kind of the five big areas and you can’t really neglect any of those. So if you’re leaving one or two of those off, you really don’t have a complete plan.” On Risk and Holistic Retirement Planning “A lot of times people don’t understand sequence of returns risk for one. And a big reason for that is because they’ve never had to deal with it.  All during their working years, there is no sequence of returns risk. It’s only as they get close to retirement and then in those retirement years. And people don’t really know how that works and what is the risk. And so that’s one big area where we like to educate them. You really can manage it well when you have a strategy to do so, but if you don’t have that strategy. then there’s more risk than you should take. Inflation, of course, losing buying power every year is something you have to account for. And a lot of times people aren’t really thinking through that. RMDs that kick in and can cause additional taxation. We call them tax triggers. It’s like you kind of think you kind of know what the tax brackets are and then, Oh, wait a minute. Now I have some extra tax on this or my Medicare goes up. And so there’s little surprises like that. We like to shine a light on and make sure we’re not doing things that cause our money to be depleted prematurely.” On Market Volatility “We don’t ever like to make predictions. But one prediction I can make is that there will be volatility in the markets. There always is. It’s in the nature of the markets and you just you’ve got the timeframes and you’ve got the right strategies. It’s nothing to be feared. Lack of preparation is something to be feared.” _______________________

Retirement is a big transition. And for some, there’s another to navigate: becoming an empty nester. Dr. Rachel Glik, author of A Soulful Marriage: Healing Your Relationship With Responsibility, Growth, Priority, and Purpose, sees it as an opportunity to reset, recalibrate and strengthen a marriage. Dr. Rachel Glik joins us from St. Louis. ______________________ Bio Dr. Rachel Glik is the author of A Soulful Marriage: Healing Your Relationship With Responsibility, Growth, Priority, and Purpose. She is a licensed professional counselor with a doctorate in counseling and a Masters in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Known for her compassionate yet challenging approach, she has counseled individuals, couples and families in private practice for over 30 years. Dr. Glik gets to the heart of what we deal with every day… and that is our relationship with ourselves and with each other. She passionately strives to empower her clients to connect to their truest self, which forms the foundation for the niche she has carved in strengthening relationships. ______________________ For More On Dr. Rachel Glik A Soulful Marriage: Healing Your Relationship With Responsibility, Growth, Priority, and Purpose Website _____________________ Podcast Conversations You May Like The Go-Giver Marriage – Ana Gabriel Mann Shift – Ethan Kross Live Life in Crescendo – Cynthia Covey Haller _____________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. Connect on LinkedIn _________________________ Wise Quotes On Friction “When they get scared because their conflict or emptiness or disconnection has reached such a level and they they everything they’ve tried just keeps them stuck. And so the friction, one of the first things I tell couples which you just said something like Oh, we have conflict is that it’s actually a good sign. It’s not a bad sign. It depends on how you handle the friction and the conflict but we’re the premise is that we’re here to grow and that’s what keeps the true spark is an element of being invested in your partner’s growth and true care and respect for them as a human being. You aren’t just trying to get your needs met but you really care about their betterment, and your own betterment, and your closeness betterment.” On Wisdom “It’s not this is tearing us apart. It’s bringing us together. This is a big opportunity and it strikes me that well I know for a fact that we are looking for wisdom these days as the promise of technology and and stuff is not answering all the questions that we’re asking. There’s so much wisdom and ancient wisdom that’s been helping people for thousands of years. Why not tap into that? And it’s really practical too is what I have found.” On Ego and Soul ” I love the work of Daniel Kahneman who wrote Thinking Fast and Slow. And I actually learned about the book through my Kabbalah teachers. And it really emulates the same or mirrors the same idea that we learn in ancient wisdom that we have two systems, we have the ego and the soul. And the more we’re aware of those two and work to negotiate the the relationship between the two.And the ego is the one that’s going to want to have fast relief. It’s it’s survival oriented, so of course it’s not to judge ourselves for having it though. It’s inherent and it’s a good thing, but as we convert from that voice to the soul’s voice which has a bigger picture perspective.Then that’s when we start to have freedom.And it’s hard. It will always be hard. It will never it’ll get harder. The tests have to be there.It’s inherent in the design of the universe that we have to put in effort. So if we conquer one level of empowerment or self-mastery, then it will it will get another one.”  

You’re working on your physical fitness, but how about your emotional fitness? Dr. Ethan Kross visits with us to discuss his new book Shift: Managing Your Emotions — So They Don’t Manage You.  Ethan Kross joins us from Michigan. _______________________ Bio Ethan Kross, PhD, is one of the world’s leading experts on emotion regulation. An award-­winning professor in the University of Michigan’s top-­ranked Department of Psychology and its Ross School of Business, he is the director of the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory. Ethan has participated in policy discussions at the White House, spoken at TED and SXSW, and consulted with some of the world’s top executives and organizations. He has been interviewed on CBS Evening News, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper Full Circle, and NPR’s Morning Edition. His pioneering research has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Science. He completed his BA at the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD at Columbia University. ______________________ For More on Ethan Kross Shift: Managing Your Emotions–So They Don’t Manage You Website ______________________ Podcast Conversations You May Like Thinking Better to Live Better – Dr. Woo-kyoung Ahn Self-Compassion – Dr. Kristin Neff The Mindful Body – Ellen Langer Happier Hour – Cassie Holmes, PhD ________________________ Mentioned in This Podcast Episode Chatter & Your Inner Voice – Ethan Kross WOOP – Gabriele Oettingen Implementation Intentions – Peter Gollwitzer _________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. Connect on LinkedIn _________________________ Wise Quotes On Emotions “Emotions are responses to things that happen in the world or in our minds that we judge to be meaningful. And when we perceive meaningful things, it activates a loosely coordinated response within our minds and our bodies that is designed to help us manage the situations we find ourselves in. So just to make that concrete, if my view of what is right versus wrong is violated, and there’s an opportunity for me to fix a situation, I’m going to experience anger. Anger is an emotion that motivates me to approach, get in there and try to fix the situation. If there’s a threat on the horizon that is important to me, I’m going to experience some anxiety. I’m going to have a fight or flight response that’s going to motivate me to zoom in really carefully on the situation so I can plan for it. Those are emotions. And when they’re experiencing the right proportions, not too intensely or too long, they’re vital tools that we have that we use to navigate the world. The big problem, of course, is that sometimes those emotions are triggered out of proportion. And when that happens, that can be a big problem. And that’s what my book Shift is all about, how to manage emotions in those circumstances.” On Purpose & Meaning “Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist living during World War II and just experienced massive loss, lost his family, his livelihood, his career. yet he was able to muster through the atrocities of World War II and concentration camps by finding meaning and purpose in his daily life. And his book always really stood with me, stuck with me, because it was an illustration that as bad as times can get, and hopefully they’re not too bad for you who are listening, but if they are, there’s always the possibility of finding meaning and purpose in life. And so I think thinking about that, being flexible and how we construct meaning and purpose is really useful. Lots of us find meaning and purpose from our jobs if we’re lucky, but we can also find meaning and purpose in our families and in our communities. And so I think taking the time, if your retirement is one where you truly are stepping away entirely from a vocation that is to find your life, think about where else you can find meaning in your life and then dive in to those spaces. Because those will provide a kind of compass that steers you through the next phase of your life. Thank you. Well, we evolve the capacity to experience negative emotions for a reason. They help us manage situations that are important to us.” On Perspective “Well, the best way to sum up perspective is as follows. I think many of us have the intuition or understanding that we have the ability to change the way we think, to change the way we feel. We can focus on the bright side, we can adopt a more objective stance. The problem is that it can be really hard to do that when you’re in the heat in the moment. It’s often easier said than done. What perspective does is that perspective shifters are tools we can use to step back and focus on our circumstances from a different point of view that often makes it a lot easier for us to change the way we think, to change the way we feel. One example of a perspective shifter something I call linguistic distancing. So trying to think through in a situation, give yourself advice using our own name and you. All right, Ethan, what do you think you should really do here? What that does when you refer to yourself using your own name and you, it shifts your perspective. It gets you to relate to yourself like you’re relating to someone else. And why is that useful? Well, it’s a lot easier to give advice to other people than it is to take our own advice as we often know. And so that’s one example of a perspective shifter. And this is a very useful category of tools because sometimes you have to stare a problem in the face. You can’t get time away from it, which we know can often help people with their emotions.”        

After a successful, demanding, and high-stress career, how do you shift gears to a new, more balanced life in an early retirement?  Marybeth Crane shares her story and insights. Dr. Marybeth Crane joins us from Texas. _________________________ Bio Dr. Marybeth Crane is a retired board-certified podiatric foot and ankle surgeon. She specialized in sports medicine in private practice for over twenty-five years and successfully built a multi-million-dollar private practice from humble beginnings. In her spare time, she completed more than twenty marathons, a dozen or so Half-Ironmans, and two Full Ironman Triathlons. She’s the author of the book Drop the S: Recovering from Superwoman Syndrome. She believes that exercise is the most powerful drug physicians can prescribe and that choosing a healthy lifestyle will help combat the aging process. ____________________________ For More on Dr. Marybeth Crane Drop the S: Recovering From Superwoman Syndrome Website Blog _____________________________ Podcast Conversations You May Like The Power of Reinvention – Joanne Lipman Strategic Quitting – Julia Keller Is It Time to Break Up with Busy? – Yvonne Tally ______________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. Connect on LinkedIn _________________________ On Identity in Retirement “I actually found that’s a real thing. My husband was very concerned because I’ve been Dr. Crane for 30 years. And now all of a sudden, I’m Marybeth. And I will tell you that probably for the first six months to a year, it was hard to meet someone new and say, Hi, I’m Dr. Crane. No, it’s a Hi, I’m Marybeth. And I would have to change it because I didn’t want to sound like some arrogant jerk. Oh, by the way, I’m a doctor. So it’s a real thing. But you also start to think about who is Marybeth versus Dr. Crane, because Dr. Crane was like a different entity. In fact, my husband would tell me when I came home, could you turn the doctor off? Because I was running the practice and my name’s first on the door, it’s my way of the highway kind of thing. And you’d come home, and now you’re a team. And I’m not the captain of the team necessarily every day. So in retirement, you start to actually be more your authentic self.” On Structure in Retirement “You learn to figure out what your priorities are for getting through your day –  the things that you want to get accomplished, the things you can get accomplished, the things you really don’t feel like getting accomplished, and maybe can take off the to do list, versus you’re running a company you have a strict schedule that you’re going hour to hour to hour. In my case, every 15 minutes there was a different person in my room, and whether you wanted to do it or not, they were there whether it was a good day or a bad day, they were still there. So, flexibility is probably the best thing, but the more you get to decide what’s important, your priorities definitely change. I feel like I was running a marathon as a sprint. When I was practicing, you’re just going, going, going. And we have an entire generation that glorifies the grind – the more you grind, the more money you make, the better off your life is. Well, that’s not what it is. It’s really, can I fulfill the things that I can do out there that somebody else can’t, can I do the things I want to do, and not what I have to do?” On Purpose “If I can help just one person, then that’s my purpose. If you think that your purpose is to play golf every day, I would tell you no. But there is a purpose to that too, because you’re out there, you’re having fun with other people or other couples, you’re enjoying the outside, and you’re delving into their retirement, because most of them are retired or thinking about being retired. And you’re helping them get through those those building blocks to what does the rest of your life look like?”  

In today’s complex, fast-paced world, what can we learn from philosophers? John Kaag thinks we can learn a lot. He’s created an audiobook Spring Training (for the Rest of Your Life), discussing his ideas highlighting Thoreau, Emerson and William James. He’s also the co-founder of Rebind, an AI company transforming classic literature into interactive, guided experiences. Rebind pairs books with original interactive commentary from some of today’s greatest thinkers who serve as expert guides,  featuring conversations, personal anecdotes, historical context, and reflections. Rebind was named to Fast Company’s prestigious list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2025 and was a TIME Magazine “Best Invention of 2024.” John Kaag joins us from Massachusetts. __________________ Bio John Kaag is a distinguished philosopher and author, widely recognized for his deep knowledge of Henry David Thoreau’s classic Walden. He has authored several books, including American Philosophy: A Love Story and Hiking with Nietzsche, both of which were New York Times and NPR Best Books of the Year. In 2023, he published Henry at Work, a thorough examination of Thoreau’s philosophy as it relates to post-pandemic work habits. Kaag has contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Harper’s Magazine, bringing timeless philosophical insights to a wider audience. ________________________ For More on John Kaag Spring Training (for the Rest of Your Life)  Rebind Try Rebind – Discount offer _________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Living for Pleasure – Emily Austin, PhD The Art of the Interesting – Lorraine Besser, PhD An Artful Life – John P. Weiss _________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. Connect on LinkedIn _________________________ Wise Quotes On Philosophers – and AI “I think it’s interesting. I think that when it comes to the perennial questions of philosophy, like why am I here? What is the good life? Why is life worth living? These questions typically are answered in very personal settings, between friends, between family members, between, I teach at UMass Lowell, so my classes are relatively small within a classroom setting. But I think what’s interesting is that when like lots of readers and lots of thinkers don’t have the chance to interact with others in a sort of active way. My mother was one of these individuals. She retired when she was 68, and she lived until she was 76. And during that time, she spent quite a bit of time online, reading online, but she really missed human companionship. And what’s interesting with this time of AI and artificial intelligence is that we have the ability to scale one-on-one tutoring interactions. Many people have talked about the use of Chat GPT and asking Chat GPT questions and getting responses. But what I find really interesting is that we have the chance to use AI to dynamically distribute original human comments and commentary into conversation.” On William James, Action and Emotion “William James…was the founder of empirical psychology at Harvard, the founder of American Pragmatism, which is one of the two major philosophies that was born in the United States in the 19th century. William James, in his empirical studies of psychology, discovered that there’s a real relationship between action and emotion. And we often times think that we’re happy and therefore we smile. But William James, and it’s it’s termed the James-Lange theory of emotions instead of saying that we smile because we’re happy. James said the other way around. He said, we are happy because we smile. So anybody who’s been down in the dumps and gone for a walk and felt better or anyone who’s even tried a little bit of yoga, sort of the beginning sun salutation, where you point your hands up to the ceiling and point your chin up to the ceiling. Looking up has this transformative power on our emotional landscape. And James was the first to discover this. It’s going back to my mother. She declined very precipitously when she could no longer walk and her emotional state sort of declined very rapidly as well.” On Habits “William James was pretty smart about habits. He said, following the ancient Greek Aristotle, that habits form ourselves. So if you think about who you are as a person, you are sort of defined by what you do in a habitual way, and your body actually takes the shape of the habits that we participate in. James, however, unlike Aristotle, was interested more in our ability to break habits, to unfix the beliefs that might have been given to us by our conventions, our society, our histories, and trying to overcome those. For James that was the task of life. If we think about cases where we reach our limits, or our habitual limits in life, and then overcome them and explore possibility, risk, uncertainty, what philosophers call indeterminacy, the sort of shakiness where the universe is not what we just expect, those are chances for us to both risk and lose something in some cases, but also to test ourselves and to discover who we are beyond the sort of normal constraints of everyday life. And James was interested in both thinking about life as a risk, but also as a reward, and both of those are equally ours when we explore them at the limits. And and I found that to be pretty instructive when I was reading James or rereading James for the umpteenth time and thinking about my mom being like, oh, man, I wish she could still get around. And what is interesting is that James suggests that even when our mobility and our actions are inhibited, we still have the ability to do small actions. And those small actions do matter for our emotions and for how we’re feeling. So I take that as pretty interesting.” On Rebind “[On Rebind] you get to go read Walden with me or you’ll be able to read The Tale of Two Cities with Margaret Atwood or Salman Rushdie doing Candide. And you’re basically getting a one-on-one masterclass with an expert about a classic book. And you get to ask any questions that you want and you’ll get pretty good answers. And thankfully, they’re originally and authentically sourced from the commentary that we’ve gotten.  There are 13 books up on the site. There’ll be 27 by the fall. Well, I’ve learned that it takes that AI has this. a very, very bad rap that it is not particularly popular and people are very suspicious. And people don’t mind interacting with a generic AI bot if they’re dealing in insurance, if they’re insurance agencies or maybe they’re pharmaceutical companies, they just wanna get answers about their drugs or something. But they don’t want to hear a generic AI bot wax eloquent about great books or poetry or things that we really care about. And that’s where the authenticity really matters. And I had to convince these authors, John Banville who won the Booker Prize, Marlon James who won the Booker Prize, Atwood, Rushdie, Elaine Pagels who gave us the gospel or gave us commentary on the Gospels.I really had to convince these participants and commentators that we weren’t pirating anything and that we were distributing their words know, useful in authentic ways. So that was one thing. The second thing is that people like to talk about books. There are 50 million people involved in Bible study, and we’re going to put out the Bible this spring in this form. There are five million people in book clubs, and people like to hear other people’s thoughts about reading. And that’s something that I’m hopeful about in terms of turning this into a genuine group reading experience.”    

Ed Hajim shares his remarkable journey from a tumultuous childhood—moving through foster homes and orphanages after being kidnapped by his father—to becoming a successful businessman and philanthropist. Hajim explains how his experiences became advantages later in life, teaching him adaptability, resilience, and self-confidence that fueled his success at the University of Rochester and beyond. Now dedicated to giving back, he focuses on helping young people through scholarships and education initiatives, guided by his philosophy that “anything is possible, education is the solution to everything, and never be a victim.” Hajim offers powerful insights on finding purpose in later life stages through volunteerism, mentorship, and philanthropy, emphasizing the profound satisfaction that comes from helping others succeed. _______________________ Bio Ed Hajim, the son of a Syrian immigrant, is a seasoned Wall Street executive with more than 50 years of investment experience. He has held senior management positions with the Capital Group, E.F. Hutton, and Lehman Brothers before becoming chairman and CEO of Furman Selz. Hajim has been the co-chairman of ING Barings, Americas Region; chairman and CEO of ING Aeltus Group and ING Furman Selz Asset Management; chairman and CEO of MLH Capital; and chairman of High Vista, a Boston-based money management company. In 2008, after 20 years as a trustee of the University of Rochester, Hajim began an eight-year tenure as chairman of the university’s board. Upon assuming that office he gave the school $30 million—the largest single donation in its history—to support scholarships and endow the Edmund A. Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Through the Hajim Family Foundation, he has made generous donations to organizations that promote education, health care, arts, culture, and conservation. ______________________ For More on Ed Hajim Island of the Four Ps: A Modern Fable About Preparing for Your Future Website On the Road Less Traveled: An Unlikely Journey from the Orphanage to the Boardroom ______________________ Podcast Conversations You May Like Live Life in Crescendo – Cynthia Covey Haller How to Live a Values Based Life – Harry Kraemer ________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. Connect on LinkedIn __________________________ Wise Quotes On Reviewing Your Interests “Go back and look at your passions. If you left some passions behind, did you really want to paint or play the piano? Or had you always wanted to find out about France or Belgium or Argentina? Well, the passions you left behind, and now you have to really have the time and the energy to pursue them. One of my passions, as you’ll see in my book, is to help people do better than they thought. And that’s a lifelong passion because no matter what you’re involved in, if you can pursue that, you’ll get a great response. So you have to go back and look at your passion and maybe in an athletic experience. And I do believe this concept of taking time to reflect. I like to take the holidays at the end of the year and sit down and spend time to do a really deep dive and ask questions. Now, passions are not only my interests, my likes, my dislikes, my talents, and also contextual. You may be in a situation where I don’t know how long it’s going to take California to come back, but you can commit yourself to getting involved with the problems there. That could take five years of your life if that’s what excites you.” On Testing Your Pursuits “Start writing early as possible, write things down and look at them monitor them. Sit down and write down here’s what I want to do.  And then I think every once a year, do a very simple dive, to say that I accomplished it. And every three years, do a real deep dive, maybe I’m on the wrong path. I wouldn’t question every year where I’m at. I mean, it takes you by mind three years to see whether this thing is good enough, but write it down, but also spend time in what I call contextual sense. Think about what the world, where the world is going, like AI or biotech. You don’t have to be really knowledgeable, you just get interested in them. What are the trends in Alzheimer’s? A friend of mine runs it, has been involved in Alzheimer’s. And he’s got a foundation, which he’s now working to solve the problem. But write it down, write it down. Go back to some of the old things you did once. There are a lot of places, or finding another organization that fits something you’re really interested in.” On Purpose “Well, finding the new purpose is more difficult. You go through life and your first purpose will be to be financially independent and my second purpose was to have a family that I could support. The third purpose was to be successful in business and so forth. Older people in my mind, you have to reach back and find a purpose that you want. The fourth part of life is community, giving back.  It’s pretty easy to find a purpose in giving back. The other purposes are material, and they’re ephemeral by the way, too.”

Will your next phase be your time? If you’re a people-pleaser, or know someone who is, you’ll want to hear from Hailey Magee, author of Stop People Pleasing and Find Your Power. It’s time to set better boundaries, advocate for your needs and priorities and start living the life you’ve imagined. Hailey Magee joins us from Seattle. ______________________ Bio Hailey Magee is a certified coach who helps people around the world break the people-pleasing pattern and master the art of self-advocacy. Holding a credential from the International Coaching Federation and certified by Erickson Coaching International, Hailey has worked with over 500 private clients, helping recovering people-pleasers rediscover not only their power and agency, but their pleasure, joy, and sense of wonder. Her debut book, Stop People Pleasing and Find Your Power, was released by Simon & Schuster in 2024. Hailey’s refreshingly nuanced perspectives on boundary-setting and self-advocacy have captured the attention of millions on social media. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Gottman Institute, Business Insider, and Newsweek, and she has facilitated workshops in partnership with WeWork, Women In Music, and a variety of other companies and organizations. Hailey is dedicated to offering her clients clear, research-supported strategies for change. She resides in Seattle, WA. ______________________ For More on Hailey Magee Stop People Pleasing and Find Your Power Website ______________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like The Power of Saying No – Vanessa Patrick, PhD The Joy of Saying No – Natalie Lue Edit Your Life – Elisabeth Sharp McKetta _____________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. Connect on LinkedIn _______________________ Wise Quotes On People Pleasing “It’s really just the act of putting other people first at our own detriment, chronically. So unlike regular generosity, which can feel really great and benefit our relationships, people pleasing tends to be a chronic pattern of behavior that really negatively affects us over time. And the costs are high. First of all, because we’re always centering other people and putting them first, we become really disconnected from ourselves. So we struggle to access our own dreams, our own desires, our own needs, and that can lead to life feeling kind of hollow and one dimensional. On top of that, our emotional health can suffer because we’re often over committed, burned out, resentful and disconnected.” On Boundaries “I think of these as the growing pains of strengthening a new muscle of learning how to prioritize ourselves. Like with any new workout, there’s some soreness after. But what we can do is we can find some reasons that might make that guilt or selfish feeling feel a little bit worth it. And for me, the best way to flip the script and really become more confident prioritizing yourself is really just to remember that over commitment and lead to resentment in our relationships and really harm them over time. So if you’re over-committed spending too many hours watching your grandkids, you might begin to resent your kids for asking so often. And if you’re over-committed to a certain volunteer organization, you might slowly begin to resent the people at the organization, because you’re so burnt out and taxed from all your giving. So what I like to remind us is that our boundaries, learning how to prioritize ourselves, are not anti-relationship. They’re pro-relationship because they create the distance at which you can really love and appreciate a person or an organization without resenting them. And I say in my book, research actually shows, which I found this so, so reaffirming, that people who practice healthy selfishness, quote unquote, which basically means those who have a healthy respect for their own needs and health, actually report having more positive relationships and more loving attitudes toward others, because they’re not constantly fatigued and burned out. So this really helps us flip the script.” On Fear “…the common thread is there’s fear. I’m doing this because I have to and I’m afraid. And that’s so different from kindness, which is really just, I’m doing this because I want to. I’m doing this because I want to help. And if you’re listening to this and you’re like, I’m still not sure, which one is it? The simplest little question you can ask yourself to discern which one is happening is just ask right now, do my insides match my outsides? Because when we’re being kind, they match our outside, smiling and giving and generosity is matched by an inner sense of just goodwill and contentment. But when we’re people pleasing outside, we’re smiling and happy and giving, but inside we’re shut down or resentful or frustrated or overwhelmed. And so that dissonance is what you want to watch out for.”    

We spend a lot of time each day in conversation. What if you could get better at it? Alison Wood Brooks, author of the new book, Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, shares her research and tips on how to master conversation, become a better listener, navigate difficult discussions – and what makes an effective apology. Alison Wood Brooks joins us from Massachusetts. ________________________ Bio Dr. Alison Wood Brooks is the O’Brien Associate Professor of Business Administration and Hellman Faculty Fellow at the Harvard Business School, where she created and teaches a course called TALK. As a behavioral scientist, she is a leading expert on the science of conversation. Her award-winning research has been published in top academic journals and is regularly cited in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and NPR. Her research was referenced in two of the top ten most-viewed TED talks of all time and depicted in Pixar’s Inside Out 2. In 2021, she was named a Best 40 Under 40 Business School Professor by Poets & Quants. “TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves” is her first book. _________________________ For More on Alison Woods Brooks Read Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves Website Workbook __________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Our New Social Life – Natalie Kerr & Jaime Kurtz Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You – Teresa Amabile Big Goals – Caroline Adams Miller The Ritual Effect – Michael Norton _________________________ What Will Your Next Story Be? Stay in the Loop with once a month updates on featured conversations and noteworthy articles. Wisdom Notes keeps ideas coming your way once a month to help you create it. _________________________ Best Books for Retirement _________________________ Wise Quotes On Boomerasking “Asking questions is magical. It’s why there’s a whole part of the acronym is about asking. But Boomerasking, which is named after the outgoing and incoming returning arc of a boomerang, is sort of a boundary condition on the power of question asking, because it’s like this. It would be like, I say to you, Joe, have you ever been to Nepal? And you say no, and I’m like, let me tell you about the time I went to Nepal. It’s almost like you’re thinly veiling your egocentrism and sort of self-centeredness, your desire to disclose about yourself. You’re kind of masking it with this insincere question. And you hear it all the time. And what we find in our research is that when I say, have you ever been to Nepal, first of all, that question is so specific, you’re already on high alert. You’re like, oh, God, here comes a story about Nepal. But even if I were to ask you, like, how was your weekend, and then I let you answer, and even if you were excited to answer that, and then I bring it right back to myself immediately without following up on your answer, it makes you feel like I wasn’t interested to begin with. And that’s a really bad feeling. In the end, conversation needs to be sort of ping pongy back and forth, where both people are sharing about themselves, but also feeling affirmed and validated and listened to as we’re playing this ping pong game. And so if you bring it right back to yourself in boomerask, it undermines the healthy ping ponginess of a conversation. Thank you. Follow ups and callbacks do exactly the opposite. So whereas Boomer asks are a villain and you’re doing, you’re bringing it too much back to yourself, which people do all the time. Follow up questions, keep the focus on the other person. So anytime someone gives you this great gift of a disclosure, you share anything about your weekend. Or if I say, have you been to Nepal and you say, no, but I’ve been to Tibet or whatever.If they’re giving you any sort of sharing, some disclosure, some information about their perspective, that is such an amazing gift. That is the greatest gift that humans can really give to each other. And so a follow up question shows, hey, I value the gift you just gave me. I want to hear about your time in Tibet. I want to hear about your weekend. I actually care about your perspective and I want to learn from you. So follow up questions are superheroes.” On Listening – and Mind Wandering “The idea of listening seems so simple on its surface. It’s sort of deceptively simple. The human mind, unfortunately, and fortunately, was not built to focus on one person and one idea at a time. Our brains are amazing. And so they were more built to wander, right? They’re we’re constantly drawing connections between adjacent and unrelated ideas. We’re thinking so much, you know, even while I’m talking to you, I might for a fleeting moment, remember, oh, I got to pick up my kid in like an hour and a half, right? That’s not bad, per se, doesn’t mean that I’m a bad listener. But it is bad if I’m pretending to listen to you, and I’m actually thinking about something else. And it means that we aren’t actually exchanging the information that we believe we are exchanging. If we’re constantly pretending to listen to each other, and we’re not actually hearing each other, that will become a problem. You know, if you disclose something important about yourself to me, and I don’t hear it, but I pretend to hear it, that’s not going to go well. So we studied we studied this tendency by having hundreds of people come together and have conversations. And we interrupted them every five minutes. And we said, Okay, were you just listening to your partner? 24% of the time, people self reported that they were not listening to their partner, that their mind was wandering elsewhere. And we suspect that is a pretty massive underestimate because we all know that it’s embarrassing to admit that you weren’t listening. There’s this very high social expectation that you listen attentively. So we suspect that our minds are wandering even more frequently than that, and that’s already a very high number. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s not a criticism about the human mind, but what can be helpful about it is realizing, oh, my mind is wandering a lot of the time, your mind is wandering a lot of the time. What can we do to make sure that we actually are hearing each other, that we’re actually exchanging the information we think we are, that we’re making each other not only feel heard, but making sure that we actually are heard. I want to allow your mind to wander and also have a successful conversation. And so I think that’s a very helpful thought experiment of what can we do? First of all, we can give people more grace, when they don’t hear something, like it’s not because they’re not interested all the time, often it’s because they’re doing, they’re so interested that they’re probably elaborating on something you already said earlier. And being a little bit more direct and overt about admitting when we haven’t heard someone, right? Like, oh, I missed that thing. Did you mean this or this? Can you repeat that? These little repair strategies can be very, very helpful.” On Difficult Conversations “So my teaching and research on conversation has been incredibly empowering for me and for anyone who is nervous or conflict averse, because it made me realize that first of all, as we were talking about earlier, whole conversations aren’t hard and bad and scary and hostile. It’s just like little moments. And that’s what we talk about in the book. It’s called, it’s not like difficult conversations. It’s moments of difficulty. And moments of difficulty can crop up even in conversations that are supposed to be fun, right? Like you think about gathering with your family at Thanksgiving or going out on a date or having a gathering with friends. You never know when a little moment of a little rift is going to happen. A little moment of difficulty crops up that was unexpected. And even more sort of troublingly, I worry that we often sort of poke barbs into each other in ways that we never even know that that moment of difficulty has come and gone. That someone that you’re talking to might ruminate about later and you didn’t even know that you said something hurtful. But let’s set that aside. In the moments when you do know that things have gotten difficult, these moments of difficulty can occur for any, for any number of reasons. And in the book, we talk about a model, like layers of the earth. And above the surface, these are the words and gestures that you can see during the conversation. We might simply be using the same word to mean different things, or we might use different words to mean the same thing, or we’re just sort of talking past each other, we misunderstand each other. Those sorts of coordination problems can cause all kinds of moments of difficulty during a conversation. Just below that at the sort of surface of the earth are our emotions. So let’s say you’re feeling really calm, but I’m like stressed out. And I need you to like be there for me more intensely that can cause conflict, or I’m really excited and want to have a good time and you’re feeling sort of sleepy and want to be peaceful. We’re going to have a bit of a emotional clash there. Beneath that are our beliefs. So I believe the truth about something, I believe some data about vaccines, you believe different data about vaccines. We disagree and are we going to confront that and discuss it? Are we going to avoid it? It’s up to us beneath that we have differences in motives.” ___________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. Connect on LinkedIn

Can an experimental mindset help you navigate your transition to retirement? Anne-Laure Le Cunff, author of the new book Tiny Experiments, discusses how to become a scientist of your own life and unlock new habits, interests, and behaviors for your next phase of life. Anne-Laure Le Cunff joins us from Austin. ________________ Bio Anne-Laure Le Cunff is the author of Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.  She’s a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and writer. A former Google executive, she went back to university to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology & Neuroscience from King’s College London. As the founder of Ness Labs and author of its widely read newsletter, she writes about evidence-based ways for people to make the most of their minds, navigate uncertainty, and practice lifelong learning. Her work has been featured in peer-reviewed academic journals and mainstream publications such as WIRED, Forbes, Rolling Stone, Fortune, Entrepreneur, and more. ________________ For More on Anne-Laure Le Cunff  Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World Ness Labs ___________________ Best Books for Retirement ___________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Tiny Habits Can Lead to Big Changes – BJ Fogg Design Your Life and Get Unstuck – Dave Evans Growing Old, Staying Rad – Steven Kotler _________________ Get Wisdom Notes Once a month updates on featured conversations and noteworthy articles. What Will Your Next Story Be? Wisdom Notes keeps ideas coming your way once a month to help you create it. ________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. Connect on LinkedIn ____________________ Wise Quotes On Becoming a Scientist of Your Own Life “An experimental mindset is one where we have both high ambition and high curiosity. This is really embracing the fact that you need both if you want to grow in life. And if you want to achieve more than what you think is currently possible, if you want to achieve more than what is within the realm of your imagination with what you know today, you need hard work, sure, but you need to keep some doors open for exploration, surprises, serendipity, and those kinds of collaborations that we can’t really plan for. And an experimental mindset is really about becoming the scientist of your own life, treating everything, every challenge and uncertainty in general as an opportunity to experiment and to learn something new.” On Reframing Retirement “I think retirement is such an amazing phase in life for experimentation. But unfortunately, because all of a sudden, everything we knew, all of the routines and the ways of working are changed for lots of people overnight, we find ourselves in that liminal space, that space of uncertainty. And so we might tend to have one of those three automatic responses. Because we might experience cynicism, escapism, perfectionism, instead of experimenting. Some of the key benefits of embracing this experimental mindset are really to use this phase to discover new things that you might want to do. To maybe reconnect with things that you were curious about and had to pause or put aside because you focused on your career or on your family or on any other projects. And it’s really considering that time as a time of possibility. All of a sudden, you don’t have someone else deciding what your calendar and schedule is supposed to look like. And you have this newfound freedom, which, yes, comes with a lot of uncertainty. We can also come with a lot of creativity.” On Tiny Experiments So tiny experiments, as I described them in my book, are inspired by the scientific method. But you don’t need a lab, you don’t need equipment. You certainly don’t need to apply for funding. You can just run your own tiny experiments by designing your protocol. And I call this protocol a pact because it’s a commitment to curiosity. The way you design a pact is by choosing an action, something you’re curious about, and committing to performing that action for a certain duration. And again, it’s inspired by the scientific method where when you conduct an experiment, you say, these are the number of trials we’re going to conduct, and this is how we’re going to collect data. And to choose on an action, it always starts with, again, with curiosity. So you can use this magic word, maybe. Maybe if I did that thing, I would feel more creative. Maybe if I did that thing, I would be more productive. Maybe if I did that thing, my garden would look better. Maybe if I did that thing, I would meet new friends. And so you start with maybe and you, that’s basically the hypothesis. That’s your hypothesis. And then you say, okay, what is the thing? So let’s say you kind of want to grow your professional network after you’re retired, you want to meet other people who maybe are retired and working on interesting projects and you want to connect with them. So you say, maybe if every Monday I reach out to someone I admire, someone whose work I enjoy on LinkedIn, I send them a message and I do that for six weeks. So that’s your pact. I will reach out to a new person every Monday for six weeks. That’s your data collection. That’s your pact. And the great thing is again, same as scientific experiments is that you withhold judgment until you’re done. A scientist doesn’t stop the experiment in the middle and say, I don’t quite like what I’m seeing here. Let’s stop. No, they collect the data and then the assess it. So you finish this, you send your six messages on LinkedIn over the next six weeks and at the end of the six weeks, you ask yourself, did that work? Was my hypothesis correct? Did that help me grow my professional network? Did I meet interesting people? And do I want to keep going? And if yes, that could even turn into a habit. Thank you. There’s a completely different definition of success and failure when you design experiments.”