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The Art of the Interesting – Lorraine Besser, PhD

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Retirement Wisdom · Nov 11, 2024 ·

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.”

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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.

Retirement Wisdom · Nov 4, 2024 ·

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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

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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.

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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.

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For More on Jennifer Jacobs, PhD

Connect Our Kids

AARP Purpose Prize

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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

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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.”

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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

Retirement Wisdom · Oct 31, 2024 ·

Podcast (retirement-wisdom-podcast-feed): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:49 — 30.0MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More

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

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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.

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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.

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Dementia Prevention: Using Your Head to Save Your Brain ( Johns Hopkins Press)

Website

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.”

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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

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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.

Retirement Wisdom · Oct 28, 2024 ·

Podcast (retirement-wisdom-podcast-feed): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:57 — 30.2MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More

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

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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.

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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.

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For More on Steven Petrow

The Joy You Make: Find the Silver Linings–Even on Your Darkest Days

Website

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Mentioned in This Podcast Episode

Helen Dennis podcast conversation

Successful Aging – LA Daily News

Three Good Things – Gratitude practice – Martin Seligman

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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

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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.”

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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.

Retirement Wisdom · Oct 21, 2024 ·

Podcast (retirement-wisdom-podcast-feed): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:30 — 28.8MB)

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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.

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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.

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For More on Jim Ansara

Build Health International (BHI)

Health Equity Humanitarian Delivers Hospitals for the Poor

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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

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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.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

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.

The Art of the Interesting – Lorraine Besser, PhD

Bio

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Have You Forgotten How to Have Fun? – Monika Jansen

The Power of Imagination in Retirement Planning – Cassandra Vieten, PhD

Are You Fit Enough for the Retirement You’re Planning? – Dr. Gregory Charlop

Season 9

When Your Time Becomes More Valuable than More Money – Daniel Goldie

Don’t Wait Until Retirement to Find Your New Thing – Charles Chumley

Spend More, Worry Less: The Forever Paycheck – Jean Chatzky

Can You Learn to Be More Optimistic as You Age? – John Trauth

Who Are You Without the Title? – Marisa Franco

Take Charge of Your Health – Lucy McBride MD

The Art of Creating What’s Next: Best of 2026 – Part Two

Map Your Days & Build Wellbeing – Matt Bloom

Don’t Reinvent. Recalibrate – Dr. Denise Taylor

Long Arm of the Past – Neal Lipschutz

The Missing Pillar of Healthy Aging – Esther Gokhale

Becoming a Rookie Again – John Fisher

How to Try Again – Steve Kamb

The Art of Pacing – Elizabeth Svoboda

The Best of 2026 – Part One – The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

Inside The Healthcare Heist – Jordan Grumet, MD

Say It Now – Walter Green

Grand Expectations & and the Unspoken “But” – Celia Dodd

Design for Optionality: Rethink Retirement – Pam Krueger

What If You Pivot Instead of Retiring? – Scott Siff

The Future of Work is Grey – Dan Pontefract

What If Retirement Is the Wrong Goal? – John Coleman

Turn Into The Swerve – Jerry Goodstein

Change Your Questions, Change Your Life…in Retirement – Marilee Adams, PhD

Two Grannies on the Road – Beth Sobiloff & Marcia Rothwell

Letting Go to Become Who You Truly Are – Deborah Santana

How to Flourish…in Retirement – Daniel Coyle

The Caregiving Trap…in Retirement – Pamela D. Wilson

The Grandparenting Blueprint – Richard Eyre (Part Two)

The Grandparenting Blueprint – Linda & Richard Eyre (Part One)

Eat Your Ice Cream – Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD

How to Stay Sharp in Retirement – Dr. Majid Fotuhi

What Do You Want Out of Life…in Retirement ? – Valerie Tiberius

Making & Keeping Friends…in Retirement – Janice McCabe

Mattering…in Retirement – Jennifer Breheny Wallace

Love & Happiness…in Retirement – Sonja Lyubomirsky

What Can Make or Break Your Retirement – Rod Yancy

Retiring Soon? What No One Tells You – Michael Kay

The ‘One More Year’ Trap – Zach Morris, CFP

Can I Retire Yet? – Darrow Kirkpatrick

Retire with Purpose – Cesar Aguirre

How to Live a Meaningful Life – Dave Evans

Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives – Daisy Fancourt

Navigating the In-Between – Monique Rhodes

Design a Phased Retirement – Anna Rappaport

The Myth of Aging – Dr. Arnold Gilberg

The Retirement You Didn’t See Coming – Dan Haylett

Season 8

Best of 2025 – Part Two

The Vintage Writers – Kim Gottlieb-Walker & Roselyn Teukolsky

A Creative Pursuit with an Intergenerational Assist – Neil & Michelle McLaughlin

My Mother’s Money – Beth Pinsker

Coming of Age in Retirement – Tom Marks

A Guide to Thriving – Jon Rosemberg

Hire a Financial Advisor or DIY? – Glenn Frank

Aging with Agility – Michelle Pannor Silver

How to Prepare Mentally for Life After Work – Joseph Maugeri

Why Brains Need Friends – Ben Rein

Re-Visioning Retirement – Susan Reid, PhD

What Matters Most – Diane Button

Less is Liberation – Christine Platt

A Serendipitous Second Act – Richard Moran

Healthy to 100: Lessons From Abroad – Ken Stern

The Art of Relationships with Adult Children – Francine Toder, PhD

The MasterChef Dentist’s Fight vs. Cancer: Food as Medicine – Chris Walinski

Life in Three Dimensions – Dr. Shige Oishi

Joyspan – Kerry Burnight, PhD

Grandparents’ Day – Kerry Byrne & Ted Page

Strengthen Your Emotional Fitness – Dr. Emily Anhalt

Resurface – Cassidy Krug

You Still Are Somebody – Carl Landau