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A High Achievers Guide to Retirement – a conversation with Retirement Transition Expert Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons
6 Plays3 hours ago
Why do high achievers find it so difficult to adjust to life in retirement?
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons was a high achieving lawyer in a big firm, until the day she decided that she didn’t want to be. Moving into retirement was hard work. Once settled into a new lifestyle Elizabeth wrote the guide for transitioning from work to retirement.
That book is Encore A High Achievers Guide to Retirement.
In their conversation Elizabeth and host Michael Millward discuss
- Why high achievers at work find it difficult to adjust to life in retirement
- How life changes more dramatically for high achievers when they no longer have the structure of work
- Adjusting from using quantitative measures to qualitative assessments
- Moving from a team-based environment to flying solo
- Defining the who, what, why, when and how of retirement activities
- Transitioning from reacting to a work-related event to being the creator of your own events
- The difference between retirement planning and preparing for retirement
You can find more information about Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons and Michael at ABECEDER.co.uk
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Transcript
Introduction to Zencastr and Podcast Overview
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Because Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production process, from recording to distribution, so easy.
00:00:18
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Rest and Recreation, the work-life balance podcast from Abbasida, where we don't tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.
Guest Introduction: Elizabeth Zelenka Parsons
00:00:29
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abbasida. Today, I am learning how to transition from being a high-flying business professional, like myself, into a meaningful retirement.
00:00:43
Speaker
My guide on that journey, Elizabeth Zelenka Parsons, the author of Encore, a high achiever's guide to thriving in retirement.
Travel Tips with the Ultimate Travel Club
00:00:53
Speaker
Elizabeth is based in Arizona in the United States of America.
00:00:57
Speaker
It is not one of the US states that I have visited, but if I ever get the chance to go, I will make use of my membership of the Ultimate Travel Club to make all my travel arrangements.
00:01:08
Speaker
That is because as a member of the Ultimate Travel Club, I get access to trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays, and all sorts of other travel related purchases.
00:01:19
Speaker
I've provided a link in the description to the Ultimate Travel Club so that you can join with an automatic discount. And just like me, you will be able to travel at trade prices.
00:01:30
Speaker
Now that I have paid some bills It is time to make an episode of Rest and Recreation that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to, and good enough to share with your family, friends and work colleagues as well.
Elizabeth's Transition from Law to New Beginnings
00:01:47
Speaker
Hello, Elizabeth. Hello. Thanks so much for having me. It's a great pleasure. and i think A subject that is very current for an awful lot of people and probably an issue that we many of us don't really take as much interest then as we should.
00:02:07
Speaker
What prompted your interest in retirement transition? Because you're originally a lawyer, aren't you? Yes, absolutely. And in fact, is that it was my very decision to leave what was then an incredibly intense career um and sort of without any real preparation or planning,
00:02:31
Speaker
leap into a very different life, um thereby basically destabilizing myself entirely. i yeah I discovered that it is often a lot more productive to do some preparing and planning in advance for this sort of life change.
00:02:51
Speaker
um And so the work I do today was literally born out of my own work solving this problem for myself, where I spent, you know, probably three years trying to recover a sense of identity and make sense of how I wanted to engage with the world after I made that change.
00:03:12
Speaker
Right. Because you've made me think, you know, when we entered the workforce, you could argue that we spent all of our secondary school years, all of our college, university years preparing to enter the workforce.
00:03:25
Speaker
And yet it's something that we do in the last couple of months when we're preparing to leave the workforce. Absolutely. You know, it's certainly true for us here in the U S and I'm sure to some degree everywhere.
Identity and Life Restructuring Post-Career
00:03:39
Speaker
The only real planning that is consistently encouraged when we think of the word retirement is financial. And I am not at all minimizing the importance of that, but there is so much more to getting this.
00:03:57
Speaker
So much more to it. Yes. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about what a retirement transition expert does. Sure, sure. You know, our work centers around all of the pieces of life beyond your financial picture. So we sort of come into the relationship with our clients, assuming they've got competent guidance on their financial life.
00:04:24
Speaker
But what we're here to help people do, really to boil it down, is to help them think and intentionally about several key areas that, from our perspective, will often make the difference between an exciting next chapter and one that feels more like the beginning of the end. you know ah one of them is We've all got to transition our identities to some degree and understand how much what we have been doing for decades has informed how we see ourselves, how the world sees us.
00:05:00
Speaker
And then think about how we're going to reshape all of that and who we want to be in this next chapter. Because we see it as a graduation into more. It shouldn't be a retraction into less.
00:05:14
Speaker
You know, the second thing people need help with is thinking intentionally about how to restructure their lives because, you know, our careers and even raising a family, those two things have been primarily what we are occupied with in middle adulthood. And they largely create the architecture by which we live.
00:05:36
Speaker
And when the career goes away and perhaps at the same time or near the same time, the family dynamic is changing, your architecture is gone suddenly.
Time Management in Retirement
00:05:46
Speaker
And for a lot of people, it's very disorienting to try to make sense of what to do with all this newfound free time, which sounds lovely when you don't have it and horrifying when you do. Is that the biggest issue that people face when they're, you in general, the biggest issue that people face when they're approaching retirement or trying to adjust to being retired is that
00:06:10
Speaker
the one about how to use time and all the knock-on effects from that. I think it's a big one. It's one of several big things, but I think it's right up there in the top three or four challenges that people have because our relationship to time for most people when we're working is that we never have enough of it.
00:06:30
Speaker
So our entire operating system is about doing everything quickly, under pressure, racing from one thing to the next, barely giving things our attention, multitasking, you know, and your whole operating system is designed to cope with time scarcity.
00:06:46
Speaker
And when you're suddenly confronted with time abundance, and you still try to bring that operating system forward, it doesn't work. You know, that's when people say, i don't know what to do with this free time I have, except try to kill it, you know, because I'm comfortable being short on time.
00:07:03
Speaker
Yes. ah So it's a, it's a funny conundrum, but the other thing that I think belongs up there with those issues are mindsets. You know, we, we use certain mindsets to succeed in,
00:07:19
Speaker
intense career spaces. And those mindsets are very important, very helpful, and they serve us well. They are not necessarily the most helpful mindsets when you move into this new chapter where you're authoring everything. yeah So that's an area we talk to people about as well. And it can often be a complete light bulb going on to in their own mind about how to think differently about this this period. Right.
Shifting Professional Identity to Personal Fulfillment
00:07:46
Speaker
Because I can imagine, yeah, to the get, everyone's going to face some sort of challenges, but you've started outlining there the sort of additional challenges that someone who's been in a professional role where they've been the the font of knowledge or they've been in a leadership role and when they're no longer in that type of job,
00:08:07
Speaker
you've got all of the normal issues that you need to address in terms of adapting to a new life lifestyle but then also the the extra challenges of letting go of those additional issues where you were the leader, you were in charge, you were making decisions on multi-million pound, multi-million dollar contracts or projects and now you're not.
00:08:35
Speaker
Exactly. What sort of examples of or case studies of these types of experiences have you got so people can sort of get a picture of of what it might look like?
00:08:47
Speaker
Sure. So many, many of my clients are intense professionals and I will sort of use, you know, big law firm lawyers as an easy category because I work with so many of them and I was one myself before I changed my my career.
00:09:06
Speaker
Let's talk about some of the mindsets that serve somebody in that position, very much speaking to the point you just made. First of all, there is an absolute sense of mastery. You know, these people are good at what they do. They've spent many years honing skills and building knowledge and providing advice.
00:09:25
Speaker
And so they see themselves as highly competent, very masterful in their area, and they're fantastic at reacting to other people's needs. That is the skill they have is they they show up every day and they never scratch their head and wonder what they're going to be doing at work all day. I mean, you know, there's a constant stream of content coming at them, challenging, interesting problems to solve and all of it under pressure.
00:09:54
Speaker
And so they see themselves as this type of person. So they're very identified with that. And the skill set of reacting and getting to the right answer quickly and being successful and rewarded for success with external things like money or accolades is what they're used to.
00:10:15
Speaker
But when you think about graduating into this new chapter, all of that changes. um You are now not the reactor to anything. You are the creator. You have to author your life. And if you wake up and pop your laptop open on day one,
00:10:31
Speaker
expecting the world to still send you things unsolicited, that's not going to happen. You know, you've got to suddenly be that person driving the material that shows up in your life, which is just a new way to think and a new skill set. So we tell people you're going to move from reactor to creator.
00:10:49
Speaker
And it's not that you don't have an inherent ability. You just haven't used that skill as much as you've used the reactor skill. Yes. Yeah. because I can see what you mean. Sorry. The other. Yeah.
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah. and And the mindset of mastery and competence is another tripping point because for many people, they've got aspirations and to challenge themselves in fresh ways in this new chapter. And in fact, that's what feels expansive and exciting. But the minute they put voice to that aspiration, the critical part of them jumps in and says, but wait, I don't like not being good at things. And I don't know how to do that yet.
00:11:29
Speaker
So I'm not going to try. Right. It was like they've they've been the center of attention in many ways. The leader, the professional, the content of knowledge. And very comfortable in that.
00:11:40
Speaker
But then actually when you've got to learn new skills, well, there's too much risk that I might get it wrong. And I won't bother. I won't bother. That's right. That's right. So we encourage this mindset of student. you know you You can be a great student at something and not know how to do it yet. so So it's all these little shifts in perspective that can help people embrace some of these changes more consciously and intentionally and not be sort of frozen into you know a position of not knowing how to handle it.
Emotional and Strategic Retirement Preparation
00:12:17
Speaker
which is the aim of the podcast, obviously we try to make people think, and it's great when you when I am made to think, is that I see lots of leaflets in the bank or things online and in newspapers where they talk about retirement planning.
00:12:33
Speaker
And it's almost like retirement planning is a, a is going to be followed by b going to be followed by C, this date will arrive and everything will be rosy and we'll have this pension and these investments.
00:12:45
Speaker
But what you're talking about seems to be much more about preparing for retirement. And whereas planning for retirement may be all sorts of tangible, logical things that you can hold and you can see numbers and all those sorts of things, it's things it's there.
00:13:03
Speaker
The preparing for retirement is intangible, almost you've got well, you might have been used to dealing with facts and figures and telling people what to do and they did it now it's much more emotional psychological yeah no tangible no nothing tangible to it but you've actually got to recreate the inter sorry the intangible thing that you've actually got to work with is you as an individual and you are no longer in the tangible workplace with all those rules and
00:13:41
Speaker
standards and status quo and fitting into society, you're starting off from fresh. Yeah, exactly. I really like that distinction. And it the other distinction along those lines, I think I'd also make is to your point of planning, it's very tactical. Those are the, what am I going to do, you know, to ensure a foundation, even with respect to things like leaving my my job in good shape and, you know, putting my own life in order and those things.
00:14:11
Speaker
That's an interesting thing as well, though, said that succession planning for someone to take over from you is often the top priority rather than creating the person that you are going to become. You are going to use the expression about graduating two more, I think. Exactly. And ah building something based upon what it is that you have done in your career. I almost interrupted you there, I think.
00:14:38
Speaker
But it's very interesting. So I apologize. Not at all. Please carry on. Yes, yes. Well, i was but you're exactly right. And I was thinking the preparing piece that you mentioned is more the why, you know, the why and who. And, you know why am i you know, embracing this next chapter with excitement? what's What's causing me to feel... growth and expansion and stimulation and enthusiasm, you know, and, and so it's more strategic. It's more about those big questions
00:15:10
Speaker
that we seem to never have time to ask ourselves when we are going, you know, a hundred miles an hour or kilometers an hour, um you know, each day working. And so it's, you know, when we work with people, it is this moment before such a big inflection point to really slow down and get out of your picture a little bit And think about what you really want because you're at a pretty special moment in life and making the most of it can be very, very exciting if you feel like you have a way to think about it that makes sense.
00:15:47
Speaker
Yes. And I think the sense is one of the things that they say, you know, it's just common sense, but common sense isn't that common. And finding the sense for you as an individual can be a huge challenge because I am mindful that many people like me who are looking towards, yeah, okay, retirement isn't that far off really, will have started their careers in the 1980s.
00:16:14
Speaker
Whereas, you know as we were leaving education and whilst we were working, that was the the decade of lunches for wimps and yeah money, money, money. And what you wore, what you drank, what you drove, all of these measures of success. And people say, well, you would try You were buying things in order to impress people you didn't like. and But it was all part of the 1980s culture.
00:16:40
Speaker
And I think to a certain extent, once that's the culture that you started with, it can be very difficult to shed that. And yet, I think what you're talking about in terms of going into retirement is you've spent your career doing things through which will bring tangible results. So you're always working towards a quantitative success measure.
00:17:03
Speaker
Something like, I sold this much, I did this for the clients, we bought in this business, we reduced the costs on this, we've increased productivity, I fulfilled all the vacancies, as an ah HR ah person, I filled all the vacancies that we had this quarter.
00:17:16
Speaker
All sorts of things which you can actually measure with a number. think one thing that that comes out from Encore, your book, is that you have to move from quantitative success measures, which are very much very often about impressing other people as much as they're about satisfying yourself right and moving to something which is much more qualitative and the measurement that you've got is a qualitative measurement of your personal level of fulfillment. Right.
00:17:45
Speaker
Which then makes me think that you reach retirement and you get to the age where you think, like oh, I'll wear what I like, I'll drive what I like, I'll do what I like, because I'm really too old to care what the people think. Right.
00:17:57
Speaker
Yes. Yes.
Freedom and Personal Growth in Retirement
00:17:59
Speaker
i I love to say, you know, I think I'm quoting one of my own clients from years ago who said, I've decided now that I've lived retirement for a little while that it's about doing what I want,
00:18:12
Speaker
when I want, with whom I want. And I thought, you know, there's a lot of truth in that is the agency to put your energy in the places you want to invest it be around the people you want to spend time with and create a schedule and structure for life that works for you. All hopefully in service of greater enjoyment and meaning and satisfaction. And, know, that that is what it should be about, right? Is that recipe when you're finally in control.
00:18:46
Speaker
Very much so. Just as you were saying that, I was thinking like, yeah, it's bad. I'll do it when I want, with who I like, how I want, all this sort of stuff. That single letter I, and you reminded me, that you may have had the same poster in your law firm, but there was a poster that was circulating, which nowadays it would be a screensaver or something like that, but it would say, there is no I in team. Right.
00:19:13
Speaker
me And it gets back to that sort of thing that we spend our careers as professionals working in teams teams of people that report to us or project teams or multinational teams and well we're gonna fly across the Atlantic because we've got to meet the other members of the team and the team the team and yet what your clients succinctly in those that expression is it's all about me it's all about I what I want to do and I totally get how
00:19:45
Speaker
difficult making that mind shift could be so right i'm saying how difficult it is tell me about a situation where you've made it easy for someone Sure, sure. Maybe I'll share one of my favorite stories that is highlighted in the book, but it's such a great example of what I'm encouraging in people, you know, and I'll try to make it as brief as I can, but I was working with a very accomplished lawyer, from Chicago, huge firm, very successful career, and was only 55 when he decided he'd had enough of the intensity.
00:20:25
Speaker
And so here he was choosing to retire, but he was just as yeah apprehensive about what that meant for him. And he felt, you know, I'm way too young to do nothing but focus on leisure the rest of my life. Like that's just not going to work.
00:20:40
Speaker
Anyway, is we worked through our two days together, as I ask everyone, I said, look, if you could do anything and it would be a wild success. I mean, you're guaranteed you're going to knock it out of the park. What would you choose?
00:20:55
Speaker
And he said, don't write this down because it's ridiculous, but I would be a Broadway producer. That's what I wish I'd always done. And the cherry on top would be winning a Tony award. for something I produced.
00:21:08
Speaker
And so of course that gets me all excited. And I said, well, let's break it down. I'm not making you do it, but let's just break it down. I mean, what would be involved in this people do it. So it's doable. Right. So we start breaking it down and we come up with a little bit of an action plan. And I convinced him that he doesn't really have anything to lose, just tiptoeing forward and doing the first few things that make sense. And,
00:21:32
Speaker
And long story short, he follows the advice and does the work. And three years from our meeting, he is standing on a stage accepting a Tony Award for Hadestown, which was a wildly successful musical on Broadway. yes And he made it happen.
00:21:51
Speaker
i mean, I had dinner with him a year ago, and he he's now on his 15th production. He's got an entirely new life, you know, seven years in the making, he's happier than he's ever been.
00:22:02
Speaker
and he said, you know, i never in a million years dreamed this was possible, but I had to get out of my own way and not criticize my, my aspiration to death. You know, I had to give it a chance. So anyway, that's one of my favorites because he is just thriving and having so much fun. It's having that dream and being free from all of the restrictions and Yeah. That then says, well, if you've got the dream, how do you go about achieving it?
00:22:33
Speaker
How do you eat an elephant one mouthful at a time? And just moving through the logical steps that will get you on the journey to where you want to be. might i actually get you all the way, but being on that journey is much better than not being on that journey.
00:22:48
Speaker
Exactly. That's what it's all about anyway.
Retirement as an Adventure
00:22:51
Speaker
the the The journey of finding out whether this is possible, what else shows up along the way who do I meet along the way, it's an adventure. And if you can see it as an adventure that doesn't need to quote unquote work, it just needs to bring you life.
00:23:10
Speaker
That's it. That's all you're asking of it. Yes, thank you. One of the things I like to ask authors of books, but this type of book is that, you know, there'll be an awful lot of common sense in the book. There is, and it's structured in a very easy to understand type of way. But what would you say is the thing in the book that, which is encore, what's the thing in encore that will surprise people?
00:23:39
Speaker
That surprises people. Interesting. Um, Well, I've had a fair number of people talk to me who've read the book and they'll send me an email or they will comment to me that there was it actually a fairly helpful and tactical chapter on how to actually get into action. And so the book wasn't all the platitudes of why is retirement challenging and how can you
00:24:11
Speaker
you know, prepare yourself emotionally and otherwise to embrace the chapter. But how how can I actually get working on a real project that feels out of reach?
00:24:23
Speaker
And there was a pretty nice blueprint in the book for what we help clients do every time they you know present an idea that feels difficult to them to reach. And I tried to lay it out in a way that anybody could take an idea and really work in a simple, practical way toward it step-by-step, very much the way this client I just described did.
00:24:51
Speaker
So I get feedback on that, that there's a great amount of appreciation for there being something actionable and tactical that could be put into you know use to create momentum. And I'm very, very glad I went to the trouble to do that because I do think that is the next place people
Health and Well-being in Retirement
00:25:09
Speaker
trip up. I mean, they can see the wisdom of what I'm talking about, but it's like, what do I do?
00:25:17
Speaker
got me all excited. Now, what am what am I going to do? What am I going to do? it's It's brilliant. You know, we've, the time has flown, really, Elizabeth, but that's because it's a fascinating, topic, which is so poignant for so many people, but I really do appreciate your time today. It's been really interesting. Thank you very much.
00:25:41
Speaker
Thank you for having me. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abusida. In this episode of Rest and Recreation, I have been having a conversation with Elizabeth Zalinka Parsons, the author of Encore, A High Achiever's Guide to Thriving in Retirement.
00:26:03
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us by using the links in the description. An important part of having and enjoying a quality retirement is staying healthy well into your old age.
00:26:16
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:26:54
Speaker
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Episode Conclusion and Audience Engagement
00:27:11
Speaker
I am sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of Rest and Recreation as much as Elizabeth and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime and anywhere.
00:27:26
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. You may also want to tell your friends, family and work colleagues about this episode as well.
00:27:37
Speaker
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of Rest and Recreation, thank you for listening and goodbye.