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Aug
15
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William Wittmann, M.Ed. LMP "BodyAndSoulMento... says:
August 15, 2015 at 2:57 am (UTC 0)
Zelinski Again,
I recommend the book for anyone under 27 years old because they are young enough to embrace the ideals of this book and shift their lives accordingly. They can choose to live the life their heart calls them too instead of the life the MBA drives them, too. After 27 years of age people get buried in delusions about the supposed necessities of life.
I also recommend the book for people over 50. These people are now wise enough to know better and can embrace the attitudes of Zelinski’s retirement long before they stop working for money. His definition of retirement is all about following your heart and is not based much on working for a living or not. Retirement is a state of mind, and you can apply many of the ideas in the book today to make your life happy, wild, and free.
Zelinski is inspiring. Zelinski knows we are all creative; I agree. I am constantly urging my patients to have some creative pursuit in their lives. Here is what he says from the book:
Once you retire, you too can reclaim your creative spirit and find an artistic pursuit that will ignite your inner fire. Your artistic pursuit — whether it’s painting pictures, writing poetry, or making pottery — will rekindle a part of you that has been suppressed for years by the structure of a job and the routine of daily life. Not only can it make you feel more alive, an artistic pursuit can constitute the primary reason for your being.
Ninety-five percent of books on retirement are about how to plan financially for the event, and they ignore the spirit of the matter. Zelinski goes for the heart as he always does. He shows oodles of evidence demonstrating money has little to do with satisfaction in retirement. It is about finding meaning in your life. It’s about living happy, wild, and free. Isn’t that something that would be useful at any age? It’s what I want for you and for me. That and being able to wear aloha shirts or the equivalent whenever you want. Cha!
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Gwen Mccauley "www.allaboutretirement.wordpre... says:
August 15, 2015 at 3:03 am (UTC 0)
Retirement is a state of mind rather than a time of life!,
You can tell this guy really knows how to live life. He has become a huge invitation for people to wake up and smell the burning rubber of their feet dragging on life’s treadmill! Even for that small portion of the working public who actually enjoy their jobs, he presents some compelling arguments as to why ‘retirement’ is an appealing option to work.
I’m someone who doesn’t plan on a traditional retirement, yet there were times as I read Zelinski’s thoughts and ideas about what’s possible in retirement that it got me thinking that I may want to revise my plans at some point in the future.
The distinction between “feel good” and “values based” happiness that Zelinski makes on p. 96 really caught my attention and I’ve already begun weaving the importance of this distinction into the coaching conversations I have with clients. In short, it highlights how the buzz that we get from spending money and ‘accomplishing’ things diminishes over time so that we have to spend more or do more in order to get the same release from it. One of those laws of diminishing return things. Compare that to the long term satisfaction and gratification we get from engaging things that hold meaning for us and you discover a kind of happiness that actually grows over time rather than diminishing over time. Very, very important for those caught in the web of illusion that golfing/fishing/shopping/traveling are going to sustain them when they retire.
Zelinski encourages us all to consider retirement earlier rather than later and to begin to pay attention to the quality of our life’s experience rather than single mindedly focusing on achieving more material success. He rightfully points out that many of us won’t make it to some magical retirement date we anticipate in the future. And he is clear in helping us to notice that money alone is not going to buy us a satisfying, gratifying retirement experience.
The only way that I think this book could be improved is with a bit more focus on the conversation about discovering the identity each of us has that typically lies buried beneath mountains of cultural conditioning. In my experience, folks who haven’t ever really spent much time wondering “who am I under all these rules, anyway?” need a fair bit of support and encouragement to keep digging until they discover themselves. That being said, the many exercises and activities Zelinski’s suggests are fine starting points for that exploration.
I think that every workaholic in North America should be locked in a room with this book for as long as it takes for them to read it through and discover the big, exciting world that they are missing! And I don’t know many people who couldn’t benefit from absorbing a few of Zelinski’s thoughts on the whole retirement subject.
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Julia44 "The Happy Booker" says:
August 15, 2015 at 3:58 am (UTC 0)
What he is selling you should be buying,
I saw myself in so many discriptions in the book. I was a workaholic. I now know better and I am trying to change my thinking about work and leisure. I have taken more time off this year than last year to date and plan a lot more days off. I thought my world would fall apart if I did this. It hasn’t fallen apart-matter of fact work has gone along just fine without me! This is something of a shock. All those extra hours were a waste of time, my time! I still have a lot of work to do on learning to find my life and live it “Wild and Free”, but I am making some progress.
This book made me think about retirement and life in a whole new way. The humor, quotes and exercises helped me understand my possibilities better. I am retiring next summer and moving on to the rest of my life and looking forward to it. Thank you Mr.Zelinski!
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