The First Portal: Geography

While choosing a spouse or career are important life decisions, a better predictor of all-around personal happiness is our location. Research confirms that “place” forms the third leg in the triangle of wellbeing, alongside personal relationships and work.

A study by Merrill Lynch and Age Wave found a substantial shift takes place at age 61 when where one lives is no longer determined by responsibilities and there is now freedom to live wherever one wishes. The study calls this change “crossing the freedom threshold”.

Where is that place for you? How will you know?

A geography of place is somewhere between your psychological wants, your needs, and what a community can offer. Many people wake up in places that give them a sense of privilege; others are thrilled with a deli down the street.

FACTS:

64% of retirees say they are likely to move at least once during retirement, with

37% having already done so and

27% anticipating doing so.

Many of us will be making the critical decision of where to live. Where we choose to live transforms us and provides us with identity and a lifestyle.

Jump down this portal to discover:

• What really matters in choosing my geography of place?

• What can I learn from where I live now?

• How important is the “beauty premium” to me?

• How long will it take to find my geography of place?

• Is married-but-living-apart a good option for me and my partner?

 The Second Portal: Yield

The currency for a life that matters is work. Professional wellbeing, according to Gallup, is arguably the most essential of the five elements of wellbeing. But who wants to “work” in post-retirement? Lots of us.

Granted we are not living in a culture that supports century-old lives. Still, the person who might be robbing you of opportunities to create productivity and relevance might be… you.

In the last third of life, we can generate a better set of choices for engaging talents by focusing not only on what we want but what we want to receive in return.

“Yield” – a new way of thinking and generating options for the intersections of needs, desires, time, and talents. Will the investment of starting a business have a greater return than the investment of grandparenting? Will time as a hospice volunteer have the same yield as learning to play the piano? Will a diverse portfolio for your investments of time and talents yield the best results?

Yield helps us discover fulfillment in new ways with a structure of assessment based on what is to be gained, versus what is given. Yield is the one contribution to our future wellbeing that many individuals fail to master. The results are often settling for less, tolerating boredom, and/or accepting that life has already given them as much happiness as they have a right to expect.

Jump down this portal to discover:

• Have I reached my professional peak?

• How is today’s culture working for me? Against me?

• When did I get away from the work I wanted to do?

• What is the yield in my current work?

• What are my professional and personal goals for growing older? 

• What am I afraid to try?

 The Third Portal: Kinship

BFFs and family are important. Friends matter. We know this. But in this last third of life, one of our responsibilities to ourselves is to create and maintain a framework of attachments that serve us well for the rest of our lives.

FACTS:

According to the research, during the last 20 years, we’ve built the social architecture of our lives in two ways:

1. We’ve invested in our most intimate acquaintances – our spouses, children, parents, and best friends.

2. We’ve spent time with people we know across a single affinity to stock our lives with social, happy, fun, and meaningful interactions.

Now is the time to create a new social architecture. We must make new friends – different from ourselves – as well as evaluate and prune friendships.

In this portal we learn to speak with candor about our hopes and dreams with spouses, partners, and, children; create new arrangements within marriages when necessary; limit time with family members who treat us badly and are disrespectful, and take responsibility for growing a strong social network.

Jump down this portal to discover:

• Did I make enough friends for a lifetime?

• Do I idealize old friendships?

• Do friends matter more to me than family?

• What does my partner-in-life want for his/her life ahead?

• How might that differ from my hopes and dreams?

• What is my level of commitment to grandparenting?

 The Fourth Portal: Freedom 

This “Portal of Freedom” is one of the most exhilarating aspects of the last third of life. We stand between two worlds – an old lifetime and a new lifetime – and although not the freedom of our youth, a blend of unregulated time and a yet-to-be-written future awaits. This is freedom laced with wisdom.

The two types of freedom are:

• Go-After Freedoms

• Self-Directed Freedoms

The Go-After Freedoms are foremost on an individual’s minds: What shall I pursue now that I have time? Where shall I go? What do I want to see and experience?

The Self-Directed Freedoms offer us a chance to satisfy a deep yearning to become our best self. How do I want to be in this new life? How can my behaviors be improved? What actions do I want to take?

This portal of freedom is about fiercely owning your life, and at the core of this is you can cherry-pick important pursuits, and you can grow into a person you want to be with pride.

 Jump down this portal to discover:

• Who might design your post-retirement Go-After Freedoms, if you don’t?

• What boundaries exist to your dreams?

• What does the outlaw in you have to say? 

• What parts of you do you want to keep/revise?

• What buried longings need exploration?