Take Charge of Your Future. Imagine Possibilities with Design Thinking – and Test Them. Join our Design Your New Life in Retirement Program – two new groups start in January. Learn more _______________________ Getting older brings questions. Debra Whitman, PhD, the Chief Public Policy Officer for AARP, had questions, too. Her research led her to write the new book “The Second Fifty: Answers to the 7 Big Questions of Midlife and Beyond.” You’ll benefit from her insights from interviews with experts and takeaways from cutting-edge research across a range of topics including brain health, an older workforce, caregiving and retirement. _______________________ Bio Debra Whitman is the author of The Second Fifty: Answers to the 7 Big Questions of Midlife and Beyond. She is an economist and expert on aging issues with an extensive background in policymaking and research. As EVP and Chief Public Policy Officer for AARP, Debra leads a team of 150 experts in all aspects of policy development, analysis, research, and global thought leadership to produce policy and research insights and solutions that help communities, lawmakers, and the private sector improve our lives as we age. Debra serves as an AARP spokesperson on a diverse set of issues including long-term care and caregiving, financial security, health and longevity, and engaging a multi-generational workforce. She connects with a range of stakeholders such as the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Forbes and the Aspen Institute. Previously, as staff director for the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, Debra worked across the aisle to increase retirement security, lower health care costs, protect vulnerable seniors, make the pharmaceutical industry more transparent, and improve our long-term care system. Before that, she worked for the Congressional Research Service as a specialist in the economics of aging and  served as a Brookings LEGIS Fellow to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Debra is a public speaker, mom, and an advocate for those whose voices need to be heard. _______________________ For More on Debra Whitman The Second Fifty: Answers to the 7 Big Questions of Midlife and Beyond LinkedIn @policydeb on X _______________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like The Measure of Our Age – MT Connolly Breaking the Age Code – Dr. Becca Levy Ageism Unmasked – Dr. Tracey Gendron Lifestyle and Financial Decisions As We Age – Marjorie Fox, JD, CFP® ________________________ Wise Quotes On the Big Questions of Midlife & Beyond “So I’ve been working on aging for the last 25 years at the Social Security Administration, running the Senate Aging Committee and then here at AARP, but I realized when I was about to turn 50, I didn’t have the information I wanted at my fingertips. I had books like What to Expect When You’re Expecting and Social Security for Dummies and lots of other great resources, but nothing that just comprehensively looked at all of the things that I was curious about. And so I wrote down a list of questions, everything from the most basic: How long will I live? Will I be healthy to more practical things like How long will I work or Will I have enough money? And then some tough questions like Will I lose my memory? and How will I die? And so those became the chapters of the book, but one of the things that happened as I was starting to put this together was my husband had a major heart attack at 48. And I’ll get a little bit emotional talking about it, but he was hiking by himself and had what they call the Widow Maker, which, being his wife, is not a great term when I heard it. And luckily Boulder Mountain Rescue raced up the mountain and carried him down before his heart stopped. And that experience, Joe, just helped me to think that even though I spent all my career planning for aging and a long life, we really don’t know how long we’re going to live. And so it also makes me really appreciate every day that I have – and I certainly appreciate him a lot more.” On Zip Codes & Genetic Codes “And so women, we live in the United States six years longer than men. I spent a month trying to figure out why. I know that people with a college degree live seven years longer in the United States and related to a college degree, people with the highest 1% of wealth, men live 15 years longer, and women live 10 years longer. That’s decades of extra time. And if we look across the country, we also have huge disparity. So your zip code is more important than your genetic code in how long you’re going to live. And so not where Boulder is, but Summit County, Colorado, where Breckenridge is, is the longest lived county in America. And people there live about 20 years longer than people in Ogallala, Lakota County in South Dakota. And so when you see these huge differences in how long people live, it’s not because we as humans are different, it’s because of the physical exposures we have, the access to good healthcare, the ability to take care of ourselves, all of these things play out. And it’s, to me, kind of not fair that everybody in America can’t hope for a good and long life.” On Habits and Attitude “So, the research shows, and that’s probably not surprising to you and your listeners, there’s five healthy habits that we can do that can give us as much as a decade more of health. The five healthy habits are eating a good diet, exercising, not smoking, not drinking, and then maintaining your weight. And even if you do one of those, you can live an additional two years. But I think what I was surprised about was how your mindsets and your behaviors also really impact how you how long you live and how healthy you are. So I know you had a Marc Schulz on recently talking about The Good Life, and their research has really shown how having really strong relationships matter in order to have better health later. And we know social isolation is is about the same as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It’s toxic. So having good relationships is really important, important. Having a sense of purpose and purpose can come from our work from caring for others from volunteering. It could be coming from your pets, but having some reason that helps you see value in your life. And then the last one, and this is Dr. Becca Levy’s research from Yale, is your mindset about aging. So if you have a positive view on what your future is going to be like, and I know you try and cultivate that through this podcast, you live seven and a half years longer. Your risk of heart attacks go down. Even your risk of dementia and cognitive decline go down. And so, to me, these lessons are I need to exercise but even more important maybe have a meal with friends. And even more important, I’ve always had a positive view on aging, but how do I really enhance that and have a sense of purpose? So those are those are the things I really took from the book.” _______________________ 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 1.5 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.

Is it time to work on what you’ll be retiring to? Join our upcoming Designing Your New Life Group Program Choose from two groups: Thursday (6pm ET) or Friday (12 pm ET) starting in January. 🔹 Limited Spots Available! Each group is capped at 10 participants. Don’t miss your chance to join at a discounted rate. Kick off 2025 with a supportive community of others designing their new life in retirement. Learn more ____________________________ Happiness and meaning have long been considered the foundations of The Good Life. But there’s a key third element that’s  overlooked in what constitutes The Good Life: the interesting. Life is simply richer with experiences that captivate our minds, our thoughts and our emotions and have the power to shift our perspectives. Emerging research is highlighting the importance of  “psychological richness” as a key component of a well-lived life through experiences with novelty, complexity and challenge. Lorraine Besser, PhD joins us to discuss her research and her new book The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It. In addition to the research base of the book, she shares practical ideas we can use to develop the skills to make our lives more interesting – without having to make sweeping changes.   Lorraine Besser joins us from Vermont. ______________________ Bio Lorraine Besser is the author of the new book The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It. She earned her PhD in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has MA degrees from UNC and the Claremont Graduate School, and a BA from Tulane University. Before joining the philosophy department at Middlebury College, she held positions at the University of Waterloo and Stanford University. Professor Besser’s research focusses on the nature of happiness and well-being. She specializes in moral psychology, value theory, and the philosophy of David Hume. She lives in Vermont with her family and dogs. ________________________ For More on Lorraine Besser The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It Website ________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like The Good Life – Marc Schulz, PhD Not Too Late – Gwendolyn Bounds Living Like You Mean It – Jodi Wellman Why Settle for Happiness in Your Retirement? – Emily Esfahani Smith _________________________ Wise Quotes  On Psychological Richness “So psychological richness, describes the set of experiences that tend to be novel, complex, and challenging, and they’re unified in that they have a particular impact on our mind. So when we engage in these kinds of experiences, we stimulate new thoughts, we have new emotions arising. And the cumulative effect of this kind of rich state of mind leads us to shift our perspective even just ever so slightly after a really psychologically rich experience. We find ourselves somehow changed. And this is the kind of richness that I think we can bring to our lives. And so psychological richness is this much needed third leg of the stool. It taps into a different part of our minds than meaning – it’s the part that is curious, that brings wonder to our experiences, that finds things interesting. And it allows us to really harness our mind’s ability to create that state inside of ourselves.” On Not Pursuing the Interesting “We think about what we want out of an experience. We think about what we’re going to get. And those expectations in that plan really dictate how that experience goes for us. Because we’ve set it up. There’s this goal that I need to get to, and I will focus on that and then judge that experience based on whether or not it meets my expectations. And that’s the kind of mindset that really focuses and structures us, but it eliminates the possibility for us to open our minds up and take in new different things. So one of the really helpful things we can do to pursue the interesting is to learn more about it and then understand that it is something that we need to learn how it feels on the inside arising – and pursue it by really identifying that feeling, and letting that feeling blossom. If we pursue it through plans and trying to get to an interesting experience, we set ourselves up. We don’t set ourselves up for success very well. So I think we can pursue it, but it’s got to be indirectly through learning what it is and allowing us to feel it in our minds and let it stimulate us.” On Openness to Experience “And openness to experiences is really important to psychological richness, because we got to take in the new experiences and embrace them. It’s going to be a little different for everyone depending on their level of openness to experience. And so I think that the way to think about your current state of openness to experiences and the way you are open to experiences or not, is both towards thinking about how you can develop more openness – even by little things like trying something different for dinner. Whatever it is that you find yourself kind of closed off to, start to chip away at that. The little things will really help. And the second thing is that just recognize that openness to experience is the way in which we can find these interesting experiences. And so even if your degree of openness looks very different than my degree of openness, all that means is that it’s going to take different things to find something novel. And we shouldn’t think about any of these personality traits as things that we’re destined for. And certainly here, regardless of where you stand on the spectrum of openness to experience, you can chip away at becoming more open and you can just learn to work with that to find what will make something novel for you, what counts as something complex for you.” __________________________ 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 1.5 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.

What’s Next?  Get in front of your life in retirement. Early Bird registration is now open for our upcoming Designing Your New Life Group Program Join a supportive, dynamic community to reimagine your path and create a meaningful retirement. Choose from two groups: Thursday (6pm ET) or Friday (12 pm ET), both starting in January. 🔹 Limited Spots Available! Each group is capped at 10 participants. Don’t miss your chance to join at a discounted rate—secure your place now and start 2025 with intention and connection. Learn more ___________________ How can redirect your skills and expertise in different ways following your career? AARP Purpose Prize winner Jennifer Jacobs, CEO and co-founder of not-for-profit Connect Our Kids,  shares her inspiring story of how she made a shift to improve lives. Her story highlights how encountering problems that your skills and experience can help to solve may lead you to a second act endeavor. Jennifer Jacobs joins us from Virginia. ____________________ Bio 2024 AARP Purpose winner Jennifer Jacobs, PhD is the CEO and co-founder of Connect Our Kids, a technology non-profit revolutionizing the way America finds families for children in foster care. Under her leadership, Connect Our Kids has developed innovative tools that help child welfare professionals use advanced family search and engagement technology to find and engage extended family members and other caring adults for children in need. A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Dr. Jacobs served as an officer in the United States Army, where she honed her leadership skills and deepened her commitment to service. The military’s core values of duty, integrity, and selfless service continue to influence her approach to transforming child welfare systems nationwide. Dr. Jacobs earned her PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of New Mexico, where her research focused on the intersection of technology and social services. _____________________ For More on Jennifer Jacobs, PhD Connect Our Kids AARP Purpose Prize  _____________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like  The Best Day of My Life So Far – Benita Cooper Changing the World One Small Act at a Time – Brad Aronson Live Life in Crescendo – Cynthia Covey Haller Passion & Purpose – Jim Ansara _____________________ Wise Quotes On Redirecting Skills & Expertise “So, I’m a physicist and a nuclear engineer, which is a natural segue, of course, to the nonprofit world. I was working in counterterrorism, as I did for most of my adult life after leaving the Army. And at that time read an article in Time magazine about foster care. This was about 13 years ago. And in reading that article, I noticed a similarity in what it turned out foster care professionals need to do to find families for the kids in their care. And what I already knew intelligence analysts do to find and track terrorists. They’re both needing to find and visualize networks of people in order to influence and interact with that those networks. The difference is just that one is centering around a terrorist and one is centering around a child. And because they’re similar processes, I thought I would find that they were using similar tools. Instead, what I found out was that while the national security space has multi-million dollar software with data search and management capabilities, as I knew, the foster care space was doing practically the same work with Post-it Notes and Microsoft Excel. And that didn’t seem right to me. So I spent the next six years trying to understand why we fight terrorism with everything we have – and that’s a good thing – but we don’t fight for the futures of the nearly half million children in our foster care system.” On Deciding to Pivot “The only remaining reason not to do it was really fear. And fear of the unknown, fear of doing something that was way outside my comfort level, fear that I might fail. Who wants to fail? And so I finally came to a decision point where I said, I could go forward with this, and that’s terrifying. And I’d really rather not. So if I don’t, let me turn and look down the path of not doing it, what does that look like? And that looks like I keep doing what I’m doing. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s certainly a valuable field to work in counterterrorism. But for me, knowing what’s on this other path, it’s become challenging at the end of that, at the end of both paths is one day, hopefully a long, long time from now, is me at the end of my life. And if I’m looking backwards on either path from that perspective, on the don’t change anything path, I have to look back and know that I had an idea once, and I knew that it could matter to thousands and thousands of people, children and their families. And I didn’t do it because I was afraid. And I felt like if I couldn’t live with that, but that would have been a great disappointment to me. Even if on the other path, worst case scenario, I look back and I say: Wow, that was a crazy time back then. I did that crazy thing and it didn’t work out. And, you know, it was a little embarrassing and I felt kind of silly, but I tried. Of those two, I decided I would rather take the one where I had tried. And of course it also has the upside possibility that I didn’t fail. And in fact, that’s become the case. We’ve had such a great team come around. We’ve had such an incredible opportunity to learn in this space. And we’ve served to date over 18,000 children and 11,000 families. We know that we have a lot more to do, but we hear stories every day about the impact that we’re making and that’s an incredible thing to have had the opportunity to be part of.” On Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone “Don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone. It is very scary, but…you don’t get the thrill of the roller coaster if you don’t go over the hill, and hit that scariness. Otherwise, you just stand on the ground watching, and nothing is changing. And so stepping outside that comfort zone, getting to know your neighbors and finding out what support and help they might need and being part of that village, both in person and virtually, can be life-changing. So don’t be afraid to do those things. It doesn’t have to be by yourself either. If you have community, a group that you’re part of, a religious group that you’re part of, a book club that you’re part of, it is a lot of times easier to do things like that in groups. And if you don’t have something like that, start one. And see what your community, what your village needs, because every village needs the guidance and the glue that people can offer who are willing to do so.” ____________________ 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 1.5 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.

Early bird registration is now open for our upcoming Designing Your New Life Group Program Join a supportive, dynamic community to reimagine your path and create a meaningful retirement. Choose from two groups: Thursday (6pm ET) or Friday (12 pm ET), both starting in January. 🔹 Limited Spots Available! Each group is capped at 10 participants, and only 4 spots remain in each. Don’t miss your chance to join at a discounted rate—secure your place now and start 2025 with intention and connection. Learn more _____________________ How could your choices today impact your life tomorrow? 8 out of 10 people over 55 say that Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias are a big concern.  Our guest today wants you to know that  half of all dementia cases are preventable. Dr. Mitch Clionsky is a board certified neuropsychologist who has treated more than 20,000 patients with cognitive problems. He and his physician wife, Dr. Emily Clionsky, have written Dementia Prevention: Using Your Head to Save Your Brain (Johns Hopkins Press).  The book highlights the key research findings over the past 10 years and practical actions you can take today to start the process of protecting your brain as you age. Mitchell Clionsky joins us from Massachusetts. _____________________ Bio Mitchell Clionsky, Ph.D., ABPP-CN is a board certified clinical neuropsychologist licensed in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He specializes in the assessment of memory disorders, other neurological diseases, mild traumatic brain injury, and ADHD. He has performed or supervised more than 25,000 such evaluations over the course of his career and still sees more than 500 patients per year. He is also an expert witness in legal cases involving head trauma, testamentary capacity, and disability. He and his wife, Emily Clionsky MD, have authored research published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at international conferences. They also present workshops on dementia prevention for professional organizations and business groups. They created the Memory Orientation Screening Test (MOST)™ a brief, accurate test for dementia that has been used by hundreds of health care professionals and previously licensed to Lincare and Quest Diagnostics. They also developed the Accident Concussion Scale (ACS). They live and work in Western Massachusetts. ____________________ For More on Mitchell Clionsky Dementia Prevention: Using Your Head to Save Your Brain ( Johns Hopkins Press) Website ____________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Why We Remember – Charan Ranganath Upgrade Your Sleep – Dr. Raj Dasgupta How Not to Age – Dr. Michael Greger Better Sleep, Better You – Dr. Frank Lipman __________________ Wise Quotes On Alzheimers “I feel like I’m talking climate control; there’s floods coming, there’s storms coming, but we can do something now. I feel the same way about dementia. If you look at the statistics, we know that if it’s just Alzheimer’s disease, there’s about 6.5 million Americans today that have Alzheimer’s. If you start including the other forms of dementia and the precursors of mild cognitive impairment, you actually get up to about 10 million Americans. When you project out to the year 2050, that doubles. So now we’re getting to a point where literally one out of every three people either has dementia or is caring for someone with dementia. And that’s an unsustainable kind of burden economically as well as personally. But if we can cut the number of cases in the future in half, then we don’t end up with twice as many in 2050. We end up with the same number now, but we actually have more people being alive. So there’s a real economy that’s safe plus a true economy of dollars because it’s very expensive.”   On Dementia “What’s the one thing I can do? And the answer is there isn’t one thing. There’s a whole group of things which interact together. So it’s much more complex than people would like to give a credit for. On the other hand, if you understand why it’s complex and how it’s complex, you don’t go looking for simple solutions. You look at the whole picture and a personalized approach that says, what can I do? How could I assess where I am? What can I change to improve my chances going forward? And that’s what makes this really interesting is the personalization of it, the fact that one size doesn’t fit all ..but getting back to your point, why is prevention important? Well, anything you could do to prevent a fire is better than putting out the fire. Anything that you could do to prevent a flood is better than cleaning up afterwards. Same thing with your health. All of the things that you can do earlier on to prevent a problem later are cheaper, easier, and more effective than what you’re gonna do later on to clean up the mess. That’s what we’re about.” _____________________ 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 1.5 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. _________________________ The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are solely those of the guests and do not reflect the opinion of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast primarily covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matters.  

Design Your Future. Embrace Your Freedom. Early Bird discounted registration is now open for our next  Designing Your New Life Group Program – with a Thursday group and a Friday group beginning in January. Each group is limited to 10 participants and only four spots are still open in each group. Learn more ____________________ Who wouldn’t sign up for more joy? Steven Petrow, author of The Joy You Make:Find the Silver Linings–Even on Your Darkest Days, rejoins us to share what he’s learned about joy – and how to cultivate more joy (and gratitude) in your life. Steven Petrow joins us from North Carolina. ____________________ Bio Steven Petrow’s new book is The Joy You Make: Find the Silver Linings–Even on Your Darkest Days. He first joined us in 2021 to discuss his book Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old. 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. He is the author of five other books, including 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. 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. _______________________ For More on Steven Petrow The Joy You Make: Find the Silver Linings–Even on Your Darkest Days Website _______________________ Mentioned in This Podcast Episode Helen Dennis podcast conversation Successful Aging – LA Daily News Three Good Things –  Gratitude practice – Martin Seligman __________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Edit Your Life – Elisabeth Sharp McKetta Are You Living Gratefully? – Kristi Nelson My Last Bad Day – Michael O’Brien Living Like You Mean It – Jodi Wellman _____________________ Wise Quotes On Joy “And as I did research and talked to experts and scholars and regular people, I came to understand that joy manifests in many different ways and has broader ways to show up in our lives. And so that helped me to see that joy can be serene, joy can be loud, and can be beautiful. It can coexist with sorrow. But the intrinsic thing that I think defines joy is that it is about connection and gratitude. And so you can be happy. You can be happy by yourself in a way. You get a new car, I’m happy. You get a job promotion, I’m happy. It’s fleeting, but you get the dopamine hit at the time. Joy kind of requires this interaction with others to make that connection, to sustain a connection. And in that way, joy is a state of being rather than a reaction to something else. I say happiness is about you, – and joy is about you and me. So that’s a real important part of it. And then the other is that it just shows up in different ways in our lives, other than in the big ways that we think.” On Learning to Cultivate More Joy “Lady Gaga said, you’re born this way or not. But fortunately, neurologists and other scientists have been showing that many of these emotions can be learned. We’re not stuck in our default settings for our lives. In a sense practice makes perfect. And so this book is my personal search for joy out of some very dark times. And the 28 steps, the 28 chapters are steps or stops on my journey. Not all of them are going to resonate with every reader, but I hope that many of them do because these are other avenues to find joy.” On Memory & Joy “Most days most of us can find or experience joy. And there are lots of ways that I talk about that, but memory is one of them. And so for someone who is having a bad day, sometimes the world looks bleak. Let’s face it, we all have different kinds of challenges. Going back in memory to a time that is happy, that is joyful and that is meaningful, is another way to experience joy. And you don’t have to have it in the present tense, you can pull it forward.” On Gratitude & Joy “Gratitude and joy are like these two cousins that cannot live without each other. It does go back to connection. And I remember when one of my scholars said, Go try doing a gratitude journal. I was like, Eyeore doesn’t do that. Eyeore is not going to find something to be grateful for every day, much less three things. But I went ahead…And if you do that for 21 days, all the studies say, you will be experiencing more joy…It’s good to know that’s not a big investment of time or money or anything. And they recommend you do it before going to sleep. If you go to sleep more in this frame of mind than sort of rehashing the challenges of the day.” _____________________ 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 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 the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. He’s 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 1.5 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference.

A study by Stanford and Encore.org found that the majority of older adults want to give back in some way. Jim Ansara, an AARP 2024 Purpose Prize winner, is making a big difference in his retirement with his organization Build Health International. How might you redirect your skills and experience to make a difference? Jim Ansara joins us from Beverly , Massachusetts. ____________________ Bio Jim Ansara is a retired general contractor who founded Shawmut Design and Construction in Boston in the early 1980’s and led it to become one of the top 25 construction companies in the US. While at Shawmut he led several volunteer teams of employees to build low-tech, clean water systems in Nicaragua with the organization, El Porvenir. After retiring as Chairman of the Board, Jim redirected his energy to the developing world. In 2009 a trip to Haiti with Dr. Paul Farmer led to an invitation to build a small community hospital with Partners in Health (PIH) in Haiti’s Central Plateau. The process took a major turn when a massive earthquake struck the country on January 10, 2010. For three-and-a-half years after the earthquake, through the outbreak of cholera and political unrest, through hurricanes and unbearable heat, Jim, his partner Dr. David Walton of PIH, and hundreds of Haitian and Dominican workers persevered to build Haiti’s new 340-bed National Teaching Hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti. Since its completion, the mission to build and equip global health care infrastructure has continued via a new non-profit, Build Health International, based in Beverly, MA. The BHI team has undertaken projects in low-resource settings across 22 countries with PIH, the Kellogg Foundation, Cure International, Direct Relief International and numerous other NGOS. For Jim’s philanthropy he has received Honorary Doctorates in Humane Letters from Amherst College and Salem State University, as well as distinction from Partners in Health, Health Equity International, The American Red Cross Northeast MA Chapter, the Political Asylum and Immigration Representation Project, Summer Search Boston, and more. He serves on the board of Health Equity International, and in years past on the boards of Salem State University, the Boston Children’s Museum, Youth Build, and City Year. _____________________ For More on Jim Ansara Build Health International (BHI) Health Equity Humanitarian Delivers Hospitals for the Poor ____________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Changing the World One Small Act at a Time – Brad Aronson Live Life in Crescendo – Cynthia Covey Haller The Best Day of My Life So Far – Benita Cooper Why People Make a Career Change with Purpose Top of Mind – Chris Farrell ____________________ Wise Quotes On Learning and New Challenges in Retirement “I’m passionate about tackling challenges and solving problems. And one of the things that really excites me in life is learning, not necessarily learning in traditional methods, but learning by sort of immersion, where I’m trying to keep my nose and mouth just above the flood tide. And I need a level of sort of challenge and the accompanying freneticism in my life to really be happy. I’d like it to be different. I’d like to be a more relaxed and easy-going person, but at 67, that’s not going to change probably. So it’s really a combination of those two things. And I found, and this is an area, Build Health International, where I could really exercise both of those things. It’s informative about who I am and who I’m not.” On the Transition to Retirement “I’d like to say that I got to where I am by lots of self reflection and and and that kind of thing, but it’s not true. I really fell into it. But I kept sort of trying to figure out what was next for me. And I was also clear on what I didn’t want to do. I knew some people who had sold companies and made some money, and many of them manage their money and got into business, either as consultants or advisors. One guy even started a hedge fund – that didn’t work out well. Lots of things like that. And I was clear that I didn’t love business. What I was able to eventually figure out is what I loved about being in business was the challenges, the problem solving, and the community I got from it. I wasn’t a particularly naturally social person. I got a lot of my community from work. Just learning was piece of it. And that’s what I loved about being in business. I didn’t love making money. I enjoyed the benefits of it, but it wasn’t my purpose. And I also knew that I was the beneficiary of lots and lots of hard work, plus great timing and things broke my way. I wasn’t a brilliant entrepreneurial entrepreneur. And I think that’s one of the things that confuses a lot of people who, like me, got really lucky once. Now, I also had to go through a transition, which was interesting, which luckily I was warned about. When you’re a CEO of a larger company, lots of things get done for you, and you’re used to being taken incredibly seriously, even if people think they’re really stupid ideas, and people say, Yes, I’ll get on that. And quickly that vanishes. And luckily I’d been warned about that. But that’s also very difficult for some people. I’m not saying everybody starts with that. But if you do, it can be a hard transition and I was able to come to terms with that fairly quickly and realize that I wasn’t special.” On an Advisor Who Tells You the Truth  “CEOs and executives, I think, live in sort of a feedback bubble where you don’t have a lot of people telling you the truth and their unvarnished opinions. You don’t have somebody saying That’s the stupidest damn idea I’ve ever heard. How can you think that? You just don’t have that. And it’s probably even less today as people are more politically correct and more cautious about what they say. And you really really need that. And I had one advisor who I had a love -hate relationship with but always respected ,Tom Feely, who was my CPA for many years and who also served as a strategic advisor. It’s an odd combination. And I would meet with him a couple times a month in person. I’d talk to him on the phone sometimes every day and he would not only push me but he would tell me when I was full of it or off base in no uncertain terms. And that was so valuable and it’s so hard to find those people in your life. So if in a transition like this if you can find people who will tell you that unvarnished truth you know whether you want to hear it or not that’s super valuable.” On Forging Your Path “Not everyone’s going to want to do what I’m doing, and I understand that. Everybody’s going to be different, and everybody’s going to want to plug in to whatever they’re doing at different levels and different ways. I think a lot of people are going to be more balanced about their approach than I am, which is probably good. But, I think it’s not just what you’re passionate about. I think that’s a piece of it. But it’s also what you can be effective at. Because if you’re not effective, it’s just not going to work. And I see a lot of entrepreneurs going on to second careers, where they’re not effective and not necessarily qualified, and they struggle.” ____________________ 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 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 the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. He’s 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 1.4 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference.

Lauren Dunning, Director on the Future of Aging team at the Milken Institute, dives into the fascinating world of aging and its implications for healthspan and longevity. She discusses innovative housing and care solutions for older adults, emphasizing the importance of intergenerational connections. Dunning highlights the rise of technology among seniors, like using AI companion robots and smartphones, to enhance social interactions. She also touches on the impact of a positive self-perception on longevity and the role of policy in countering ageism.

Christine Benz, Director of Personal Finance at Morningstar and author of "How to Retire: 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful, and Wealthy Retirement," dives into the emotional and social aspects of retirement. She discusses the importance of finding purpose and maintaining connections post-work. Benz emphasizes balancing relaxation with meaningful pursuits and highlights the concept of 'microjoys'—the small daily pleasures that enhance happiness. She also explores how embracing hobbies like birdwatching and taking sabbaticals can lead to a fulfilling retirement.

A lot changes when you retire. That can be daunting, but it also presents valuable opportunities. It gives you a window to recreate a new approach to life now that you’ll have the time and freedom to pursue what you’d like to do. Teresa Amabile, co-author of the new book Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You, joins us to discuss the key lessons from over 200 interviews with 120 people and their experiences in retiring. Teresa Amabile joins us from Massachusetts. _____________________ Bio Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration, Emerita and a Director of Research at Harvard Business School. Originally educated as a chemist, Teresa received her doctorate in psychology from Stanford University. She studies how everyday life inside organizations can influence people and their performance. Teresa’s research encompasses creativity, productivity, innovation, and inner work life – the confluence of emotions, perceptions, and motivation that people experience as they react to events at work. Teresa’s work has earned several awards: the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Management’s OB Division (2018); the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (2017); the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Israel Organizational Behavior Conference (2018); the Center for Creative Leadership Best Paper Award (in Leadership Quarterly) (2005); and the Torrance Award from the National Association for Gifted Children (1998). In 2020, she was named one of the top 50 scholars, by citation count, in business/management (PLOS Biology). She has presented her theories, research results, and practical implications to various groups in business, government, and education, including Apple, IDEO, Procter & Gamble, Roche Pharma, Genentech, TEDx Atlanta, the Society for Human Resource Management, Pfizer, and the World Economic Forum. In addition to participating in various executive programs at Harvard Business School, she created the MBA course Managing for Creativity, and has taught several courses to first-year MBA students. Teresa was the host/instructor of Against All Odds: Inside Statistics, a 26-part instructional series originally produced for broadcast on PBS. She was a director of Seaman Corporation for 25 years, and has served on the boards of other organizations. Teresa’s discoveries appear in her book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. The book, based on research into nearly 12,000 daily diary entries from over 200 professionals inside organizations, illuminates how everyday events at work can impact employee engagement and creative productivity. Published in August 2011 by Harvard Business Review Press, the book is co-authored with Teresa’s husband and collaborator, Steven Kramer, Ph.D. Her other books include Creativity in Context and Growing Up Creative. Teresa has published over 100 scholarly articles and chapters, in outlets including top journals in psychology (such as Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and American Psychologist) and in management (Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal). She is also the author of The Work Preference Inventory and KEYS to Creativity and Innovation. Teresa has used insights from her research in working with various groups in business, government, and education, including Procter & Gamble, Novartis International AG, Motorola, IDEO, and the Creative Education Foundation. ___________________ For More on Teresa Amabile Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You  by Teresa M. Amabile , Lotte Bailyn, Marcy Crary , Douglas T. Hall  and Kathy E. Kram ___________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Edit Your Life – Elisabeth Sharp McKetta The Balancing Act in Retirement – Stew Friedman Retirement Rookies – Stephen & Karen Kreider Yoder Independence Day – Steve Lopez ___________________ Wise Quotes On the Developmental Tasks in Retirement “We found four jobs, essentially, four tasks that people have to do when they retire. Now, this work can be fun and exciting, at least parts of it, but it does take time and effort. The first task is deciding when and how to retire. This is a big deal for most jobs and most professions in the U.S. because we do not have a mandatory retirement age, as many industrialized countries do. So the decision is a thing that we have to deal with. The second task is detaching from work, tangibly ending, finishing up your work, doing the HR paperwork, but psychologically as well. And that part is a lot more difficult for many people, because they have to deal with a trio of losses, or at least big changes. One is identity. Another one is relationships that you’ve had for maybe decades at work. And the third is life structure loss. So your life has been really structured by that thing that’s occupied 40 or maybe 50 or more waking hours of your life for decades. So there’s that life structure loss. And that can all make detaching from work that second task kind of challenging. We saw many ways that people could deal with that successfully, but it is work. And the third task is exploring and experimenting to build a provisional retirement life, once you are in retirement. This can involve exploring and experimenting with new activities, relationships, groups, new organizations to join, places to be. That exploration actually can start before you retire. Some people  started dipping their toe into some things.But it usually happens in a big way after people retire in those first months and and really first year sometimes. And the fourth task is consolidating a quasi-stable retirement life. So figuring out from that provisional retirement life what seemed to be working well for you and and keeping those elements in your life, investing in them more if you feel like it and settling into something that feels more or less like a settled rhythm and routine for your life.” On Life Structure “Let me just explain this concept of life structure. Your life structure basically just includes everything in your life at a given point in time. Activities and relationships, groups and organizations you belong to, places where you spend your time. In our data, we saw a constant interplay, a kind of dance throughout the retirement transition between people’s life structure and what we psychologists call their self. The self includes everything central about a person. There are multiple identities. A person can be an engineer and a leader and a grandparent. So multiple identities, their values and priorities, their needs, their personalities, even their health.” On The 4 As “The four A’s…are alignment, awareness. agency and adaptability. So alignment is developing the realization that you should try to work toward good alignment between yourself and your life structure. And that just means looking at your life structure realistically and honestly and looking at yourself as you are now and seeing Does that life structure align well with who I am? And for that you need the second A, which is awareness. So you need to develop a good awareness of what the dynamics in your life structure really are and how they’re affecting you. You also need to develop good self -awareness. That’s often tougher for many of us. And it sometimes takes talking with a trusted other person, a mentor, a therapist or a counselor, sometimes a coach. I know you coach people, a trusted friend or a family member to help you reflect on who you are now. What’s really important to you? What are your needs? What are your most important values? So that A of awareness is absolutely necessary for you to develop that alignment that you need. And also to develop alignment, you need to exercise agency and that is to have the courage to proactively make changes in your life structure if you see that there are elements that aren’t working so well for you or maybe the agency to try to make some changes in yourself. And finally, because, as you said, life happens. We can’t exercise agency over everything in our lives. In fact, the truth is we can exercise agency over very few things in our lives. So we need to develop adaptability when things happen that we cannot control, we can’t change, this is our life and we need to figure out how to adapt, how to adjust.” ___________________ 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 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 the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. He’s 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 1.4 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference.

It’s time to look back at our best podcast conversations from earlier this year. We’ve covered smart moves you can make to optimize your physical and cognitive health and longevity; how a Life Calculator can give you a wake up call and stop you from procrastinating, and why more people are rejecting the idea of a traditional retirement – and choosing their own adventure. We also explored why our retirement system in the US needs an overhaul; how you can make today your last bad day; how social connections affect your health – and what you can do about it. Listen in for insights to help you retire smarter. Want to listen it any of of the full conversations? How Not to Age –Dr. Michael Greger  Live Like You Mean It – Jodi Wellman Why We Remember – Charan Ranganath Unretired – Mark Walton My Last Bad Day – Michael O’Brien The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy – Teresa Ghilarducci The Laws of Connection – David Robson ______________________ Other Best Of Episodes You May Like Best of 2024-Part One Best of The Retirement Wisdom Podcast 2023 – Part Two The Very Best of 2022 The Best of 2021 – Retirement Wisdom _______________________ 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 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 the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. He’s 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 1.4 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference.