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Solve for X: Finding Purpose and Joy After a High-Performing Career - with Michael Kay
3 Plays14 hours ago
Michael F. Kay spent decades as a CPA and financial professional before transitioning into life coaching focused on the emotional and identity side of retirement. In this conversation, he explains the origin of “Chapter X” (solve for X) and why many high-performing men reach retirement without a clear picture of what comes next.
Together, Jacquie and Michael unpack the universal fears that show up in retirement—relevance, vitality, identity—and why the solution is never one-size-fits-all. Michael shares practical ways to reclaim curiosity, experiment without pressure, and let go of ego-driven competition that no longer serves you. They also talk about the value of remembering past transitions (your first day at work, your first promotion) as proof you already have the tools to navigate change. Michael describes exercises from his book—including writing a multi-perspective eulogy—to clarify values and live intentionally now. The episode closes with a powerful reminder: retirement is your chance to curate your days around meaning and joy, not “shoulds,” deadlines, or status.
Key topics discussed
- Michael’s path: musician → CPA → financial life planner → life coach
- Why retirement questions start with: “What does that mean to you?” • The origin of “Chapter X” and the idea of “solve for X”
- What “X” really is: what gets you out of bed, meaning, purpose, curiosity
- Why high-performing men often struggle more with the transition
- Identity beyond the job title: “Who are you when you’re no longer your job?”
- The danger of “waiting to die” and the sadness of purposeless later years
- Depression in seniors and the pull of living in the past
- Retirement as a new transition: reclaiming a beginner’s mind
- No one dies from being uncomfortable: normalizing transition anxiety
- Unlearning: ego, competition, ladder-climbing, and “should”
- Go-go / slow-go / no-go stages and using vitality wisely
- Contribution doesn’t have to be big: small acts that lift others
- Joy as a filter: if it isn’t joyful, don’t do it
- Curating your day: energy, sleep, priorities, and flexibility
- The book’s process: progressive exercises + expert chapters (gerontology, psychology, exercise, couples)
- The eulogy exercise: clarifying values and living them now
Action steps:
- Define your X: Write down what you want to get out of bed for in this season of life.
- Try a beginner’s mind experiment: Pick one new activity and commit to 3 tries—no pressure to “be good.”
- Audit your “shoulds”: List the things you do out of obligation; cross out one this week.
- Recall a past transition: Write about your first day at your first real job—what did you learn about adapting?
- Create a 2–3 item day: Put only 2–3 priorities on your calendar, leaving space for joy.
Connect with Michael: https://michaelfkay.com
Grab Michael's book on Amazon
Recommended
Transcript
Challenging Retirement Stereotypes
00:00:03
Speaker
Retirement. That's what we're all aiming at, right? But exactly what does that mean? conjures up visions of endless days of golf, drinks with little umbrellas in them on a tropical beach, feet up reading a book.
00:00:16
Speaker
Is that what it's all about? I don't think so. Life would get pretty dull after a while without anything meaningful to do, don't you think? I'm Jackie Doucette, and I'm on a mission to discover exactly what life is like beyond retirement.
00:00:30
Speaker
Join me while I chat with people who've already done it, who've retired to something rather than from something. Let's find out together exactly what's waiting for us when we say goodbye to that nine to five.
Michael Kay: From Finance to Life Coaching
00:00:51
Speaker
Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Beyond Retirement. I'm your host, Jacqui Doucette. Today I'm joined by Michael Kay, who's a certified life coach. He's the host of the podcast, Chapter X, and he's the author of numerous books, including one that was just released in February called How to Craft Your Chapter X, a guide to highper performing for high performing men to discover meaning and joy in retirement. He's based in New Jersey and he was a financial professional for over 25 years before turning his attention to the non-financial aspects of retirement.
00:01:24
Speaker
He's been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Psychology Today, and now he's hitting the big leagues with Beyond Retirement. Thanks for joining me today, Michael. It is my honor, Jackie, to be here and and and just to have a chance to just talk to another professional about you know retirement and what you're seeing out there and how we can make it maybe make a difference in the lives of people.
00:01:51
Speaker
I think that's it a noble idea. Hopefully we'll change somebody's life today. That would be awesome. So your life changed along the way. You went from you know being a s ah financial advisor to being a life coach. What was the spark for that big change?
00:02:13
Speaker
Well, i'm going to I'm going to back you up a couple of steps just because you don't you don't i didn't burden you with the with the full story. So I actually started out my as heading towards a career as a a musician. And when I decided I wasn't going to be a ah continue a professional but career, I decided what any musician would do, and that is I became a CPA.
00:02:41
Speaker
and um And I spent around almost 10 years as an accountant and as a CPA ah with various firms here in New Jersey. And ah after that amount of time, I decided I really got tired of looking backwards because accounting is all about what happened last quarter, you know, last month, last quarter, last year, And um it just lost its its luster. And I wound up joining a friend of mine who had a financial services firm. And um he wanted me to start a financial planning practice. And his his firm was mostly around insurance and investments and things like that, of which I knew almost nothing about.
00:03:24
Speaker
Um, and i it wasn't very long till I, I discovered that I'm really awful at selling stuff. So, um, I decided to kind of break off, create my own firm.
Beyond Finances: Understanding Money History
00:03:38
Speaker
And little by little through, i will say accidents, fate, whatever, um i shifted from a you know selling stuff to a creating a firm that was a multi-advisor firm ah with advisors in various areas of the country, ah fee only, ah not ah on a retainer basis, not selling stuff at all. ah And ah I wound up ah transitioning ownership four years ago um ah to my younger partner, Jeremy, who was brilliant and we were very much aligned. We worked very hard on creating this transition. He was actually started out, he was a ah so I was teaching tax at and NYU at their CFP program and wound up meeting him there. And he came to see me one day and
00:04:35
Speaker
uh, was interested in maybe opening his own firm. And I said, that's ridiculous. Come work with me. And we did. And, um so anyway, so four years ago I handed the keys over and um,
00:04:48
Speaker
As I was transitioning, and ah let me step back a half a step. um As a financial life planner, so much of our work was around asking questions that centered around trying to understand people's motivations. And the way to understand that was by understanding, their say, their history. So so for example, um our money history dictates how how we look at money. Is it a weapon? Is it a tool? Is it ah a way of helping other people? Is it a way of control? So understanding people's money history, understanding their motivations, and helping them make good decisions around-
00:05:33
Speaker
their money decisions and, you know, around how they were going to use their money, accumulate their money. Why do this instead of that? You know, what are what's what will allow you to put your head on the pillow at night? And how do you make those decisions? So as a financial life planner, so much of our questions was dealing with this, let's look forward. So for example, someone, ah a client would come to me and say, can I retire?
00:05:58
Speaker
And my question would be, well, what does that mean to you? um yeah You know, oh, well, I want to travel. Well, what does that mean? You know, you can take the bus to Bear Mountain or you can take the Queen Mary around the world. They're both travel, but they have a different price tag. You know, what are you going to do on a daily basis or
Visualizing Retirement: Beyond Work
00:06:18
Speaker
week you know what is' what's going to keep you engaged, active? i You know, I had one client who came in and all he wanted to do was retire. He was done. He was a ah ah a television producer. for a well-known ah talk show, a morning talk show. And he came to the point where he was done.
00:06:37
Speaker
all he wanted to do was retire. And I said, well, you know until you have an idea of what you want your life to look like, you can't retire. Because how can I tell you if you have enough? Enough for what?
00:06:52
Speaker
And so um what I realized through so hundreds and hundreds of conversations, also maybe thousands of conversations is probably closer to reality, ah was that, you know, when I would talk to to men especially, they had no idea what their next chapter looked like. You know, when you say, well, what are you going to do when you retire? I'm going to play golf.
00:07:18
Speaker
ah Really? Seven days a week? Eight hours a day. Yeah. Eight hours a day, 52 weeks a year, and forever, you know, for the next 30 years, that's it.
00:07:29
Speaker
And really what it meant was that they hadn't had the time, they hadn't taken the time to really dig deeper as to what might, might. And i I like the, and that word's important is what might be meaningful, what might be interesting, what might be fun. Yeah.
00:07:46
Speaker
ah so i i So as I was ah heading towards transition, I decided to take a course as a as a life coach so that I could lead not talk about money. Because been there, done that, I don't talk about money. i don't i don't On my podcast, I do not do financial shows.
00:08:06
Speaker
um But I do talk about the fact that unless you have your financial life straightened out, this next the next part is impossible.
00:08:17
Speaker
Um, so it's, it's, it, it is absolutely the first step is to make sure you understand your numbers, make sure that you understand,
00:08:28
Speaker
um what ah your net worth, what your safe so spending corridor is, all these things that are super, super important before you go into the next.
00:08:39
Speaker
So um becoming ah a life coach was a way of helping people.
Supporting Men in Finding Purpose
00:08:44
Speaker
And I created this community called Chapter which aimed at helping men specifically. Because what I found, and I've gotten criticized by women like crazy ah for not including them in in this little party, but the the what I have found generally speaking, and I'm going to put the word generally speaking underlined in bold exclamation points, is that m women by and large, especially of this age group of baby boomers,
00:09:17
Speaker
are a lot better aligned, balanced, and ah ready for this transition, whereas men are not. ah And I also felt very strongly that I didn't i don't feel that I have...
00:09:36
Speaker
What's the right word? I can't speak from a woman's point of view. I'm not a woman. And I think it would be disingenuous for me to stand in that in that place to tell a woman ah something that, ah i you know, I can say things in general terms, but in terms of their experience.
00:09:58
Speaker
Because it's different. by and large, generally speaking. so um So that was really, that was my motivation in creating Chapter X and the podcast. And I write three blog pieces a week and I do a monthly Zoom meeting for whoever wants to jump on. And i have three rules. One is we don't talk politics, we don't talk sports, and I don't care what they're drinking. So we'll only talk about real stuff.
00:10:29
Speaker
and That sounds good. i I was thinking while you were saying all of this about it being called Chapter X and only for men. Maybe you should have called it Chapter Y since it's a Y chromosome that the men have. ah That's true. But Chapter X, really, the whole idea of X came from my eighth grade algebra class that I found myself- solve for Everything was to solve for X. And I hated algebra with with such an intense passion, that um but it's always stuck with me is solve for X. So when you come out of your life in your career and you say, okay, well, what now? is
00:11:14
Speaker
Okay, we've got to solve for X. So that's where that's where it came from, as silly as that is. Makes a lot of sense, actually. So what um what does that X actually represent to people, to your to your clients, to the people
Rediscovering Curiosity and Playfulness
00:11:32
Speaker
that you talk to? What kind of things does X mean? Yeah, X is what gets you out of bed in the morning.
00:11:38
Speaker
What are the aspects of life that you... are curious about. What are the things that provide meaning and purpose to you as an individual? How you define meaning, how you define purpose. And I think you know because so many men are raised with the idea that their only reason that they're put on this earth is to work and to be successful, that they have forgotten
00:12:10
Speaker
what it means to play, what it means to have fun, what it means to not necessarily be competitive in every aspect of your life. You don't have to crawl over anybody in retirement. you don't There's no ladder to climb.
00:12:27
Speaker
But this is where you get to create the sandbox you want to play in and play and experiment. you know When we're young, before we have this ah Before we are you know laser focused towards ah this career,
00:12:46
Speaker
we we were curious. We explored. We went into the woods and turned over rocks and walked through you know streams examined things and tried different things.
00:13:01
Speaker
But we've lost that because yeah we've we we've been told that our only purpose is to you know be successful, get to the top of the ladder. Whether you're ah ah a doctor, whether you're an attorney, whether you're a CPA, whether you're a business owner or an executive, focus on on on that point. And that's it.
00:13:24
Speaker
um And
00:13:28
Speaker
what I'm trying to do is break those barriers down, break those ideas down that it's, it, we don't need it anymore. Okay. It was important, I guess at, during our lifetime.
00:13:42
Speaker
Um, you know, I was one of the people that, you know, it's like when I, when I achieved my CPA, my CPA license, and it was rather, it was a very arduous ordeal,
00:13:54
Speaker
um You know, I looked at it said, okay, that's good. i got When I got my sort of my CFP certificate, okay, that was good. But to me, it wasn't important. It wasn't who I who i am.
00:14:09
Speaker
So we have to I try and get people to look at who they are beyond beyond their job title. You know, I mean, ask that question, you know, who are you when you're no longer your job?
00:14:22
Speaker
You know, what's what is underneath the veneer that we've built up and this protective shell that we've created around our ego and our um idea of who we are and our power?
00:14:37
Speaker
And because at the end of the day we're all going to die, okay? um and And I know people who I know as sure as I'm sitting here, they are going to leave their offices horizontal, right?
00:14:52
Speaker
because they cannot even imagine anything doing anything other than getting up every day, going to the office, and working X number of ridiculous hours.
00:15:04
Speaker
I was going to say that when I was getting ready to retire, I was talking to people and they were looking at me. I was in the military and they look at me and go, you're going to retire. Why are you going to retire? I'm never going to retire. My job's my life. And I'm kind of looking at them going, you know, that's really sad. I'm really happy that you like your job, but there's more to your life than that. And and you really need to find it Yeah, it's so true. And, you know, I i i do a little volunteer work and i visit this this ah elderly guy you know who's in ah an assisted living situation. And when I walk through this place and I see these people who are, they're they're really in their you know they're they're ending chapters. And it's like,
00:15:54
Speaker
um they they have no life purpose. And it's, it's, it's devastatingly sad. So, you know, its and I, and when, when I, when I'm with this, this guy and I'm trying to get him to go, you know, you need to exercise more. You need to move around more. You need to interact with other people more. You need, you know, instead of sitting in your apartment with the TV on and that's not, that's not living.
00:16:28
Speaker
um that's just waiting to die. And, you know, I've heard stories from ah men in in in the Chapter X community who've told me a neighbor who retired, who was a, you know, executive, very high level executive. He retired. All he does sits on the couch and watches CNN.
00:16:49
Speaker
Yeah. And it's like, wow, exactly. and i And I offer and I said to him, you know, would he be willing to, you know, would to have a conversation, meet me for coffee or whatever?
00:17:00
Speaker
And he said, no, he just, that's it. And I find that tragic because there's so much he could do. There's so much he could give. ah Do you think it's a matter of...
00:17:14
Speaker
having kind of shut off a piece of your your brain while you're while you're working and focused on your career, you've got kind of a tunnel vision going on. And once that door closes, we've forgotten or they've forgotten that there were other doors that could be opened. yeah is It's just a matter of taking the time to open those doors. I absolutely think that's true. And and the fact that you know depression is so rampant among seniors and and men especially because all they can think about is what they did.
Embracing Change in Retirement
00:17:49
Speaker
you know i remember going to a social event last fall. And most of the people were no longer working. And I'm kind of, and I don't know these people all that well. And all I'm kind of, I'm kind of being the bee and flitting around to the different, and all I'm hearing these conversations, these war stories.
00:18:09
Speaker
And um i had no interest in any of that because I don't care who they were. you know, I want to know who who they're becoming. And, you know, I, and I've had these conversations with people and and I can see how with, with a little, with some focus and some effort that, you know, and, and that's what I tried to do in, in, in my book and how to craft your chapter X is to take people through the experience of kind of reclaiming their past. Because the fact is
00:18:50
Speaker
We've been through in our lives transitions dozens, if not hundreds of times in our lifetime, right? We, you know, from the time that we're a baby in the crate in the in the in the crib going and we turned over for the first time, that was a transition from crawling to walking, from walking to running, from nonverbal to verbal, you know, to, you know, preschool to kindergarten, from kindergarten to you know the end of elementary school and college and all these other things, and you know marriage, divorce, children, ah jobs. you know We've been through so many transitions of going from not knowing to knowing.
00:19:36
Speaker
And the thing that's the most important aspect of that is the curiosity and the the recognition of Yeah, it's not comfortable.
00:19:49
Speaker
Transitions are generally not comfortable. And as I say to my friends and my community and my clients, um no one ever died from being uncomfortable.
00:20:01
Speaker
you just You're just uncomfortable. but just think And one of the exercises I ask people to do is recall your first day of work after after your professional school, you know, your college, whatever, wherever you went, into the workplace, not as ah a student, not a part-time job, but your full-time, what was it like for you?
00:20:24
Speaker
Go back and and and record it, write it. You know, and and as I sat and did the exercises myself, and I could recall my first day as an accountant, and I had to be at the office at nine o'clock.
00:20:41
Speaker
And I was up at 4 a.m. And I was showered by 4.20. And I was dressed by 4.45. four forty five And I sat at the table going, oh my God, I've got all these hours. And I'm sweating. And I'm nervous. And i'm saying and I remember sitting in the parking lot just watching the my my my watch well you know as to when I should go in and walk. And I i can recall the...
00:21:08
Speaker
the the anxiety of sitting there waiting for someone to to let me in and and the questions. and you know So it's it's important to recall, where have I been?
00:21:21
Speaker
We have all the tools we need. We've grown them from the time of our childhood. Now we just need to apply those tools to this chapter.
00:21:35
Speaker
It's funny you say that because i I was going through that in my mind they my very first day as a pharmacist. It's like scared out of my wits. you know what What am I going to do? and Yeah.
00:21:48
Speaker
And it's it seems that people forget that retirement is just like having a new job. It's just you know this is the new the new day. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. i mean, I remember like, okay, I've got my accounting degree and I'm going into work for this accounting firm and i don't know a damn thing.
00:22:09
Speaker
Yep. And then suddenly you did. Yeah. yeah i and And that recognition of, you know, everyone started at the same place. Yeah.
00:22:22
Speaker
But nobody likes to be the beginner. No one wants to feel like they don't know anything. And and that's ah that's a really strong, a substantial kind of fear of having people you know potentially laugh at you because you're doing it wrong. But know how how do you convince people that there's no wrong way to do retirement other than the sit on the sofa and listen to CNN all day? Yeah, exactly. And and and I think one of the ways to to to to do it is to remind them that they've done it before.
00:22:56
Speaker
They've done it hundreds of times before. You know, whether you you know when you had your first ah promotion, right, you you went back to non-knowing.
00:23:11
Speaker
yeah what What was required of you? And each step of the way, So we've always had these these things. And what what have we learned? We've learned how to communicate with each other.
00:23:24
Speaker
We've learned how to learn, right? how to you know We've learned how to deal with our fears and anxieties. We've learned a whole raft of skills that we needed to get to where from where we started to where we ended up in our career, right?
00:23:42
Speaker
So we need the same we need to reclaim that same beginner's mind to be able to say, huh, this is just a new chapter of learning and experiencing.
00:23:55
Speaker
But we can take away the pressure of the financial pressure.
Unlearning and Embracing New Pursuits
00:24:01
Speaker
We can take away the peer pressure. we can take away the ego out of it because It's just you and maybe and and you and your family or whoever is in, you know, whoever whatever comprises of of your family. and and And it's really important to be able to say, okay, you know, they're going to be
00:24:28
Speaker
I don't want, i ill I'll use the word failure. There's going to be failure. There's going to be things that you try that you don't like. You know, um as as i as I said earlier, you know, i I was a classically trained trumpet player growing up. And um when I was...
00:24:47
Speaker
18, 19 years old, ah when I decided I was not going to pursue a professional career, I put the horn in the case and closed it for 50 years. And i mean, when I tell you literally, I was i was studying with a a teacher who broke me to tears every week. ah And I became a pretty good player. And when I was 19 years old, a friend of mine played a recording for me of a jazz trumpet player who happened to be a protege of Dizzy Gillespie. know if you're a jazz person, but, and he was the same age as i and I heard his recording. I said, I'm wasting my time.
00:25:27
Speaker
because I will never be this good. I don't care how much I study. I will never be this level of skills. And i that's when I put the horn in the case. And 50 years later, i was having a conversation, and and and i had met and in between time, I had met him this person.
00:25:48
Speaker
trumpet player who actually threatened to to kick my butt if I didn't go back and, because I, I told the story on the rate on the, on a radio show. Um, but, um, I was having conversation with a friend who was a really a world-class and world-famous musician and educator.
00:26:06
Speaker
And he said to me, goes, why don't you just play again and just have fun with it? And I'm like, Fun? Fun? There was no fun involved. I loved playing, but it this was this was every fiber of my being growing up.
00:26:27
Speaker
And i thought about what he said and I said, okay. And I started playing again and I started taking lessons again. And I started playing with ah a local adult big band and having a ball.
00:26:42
Speaker
But I had to change the mindset. I had to change the whole cast of the self, the, the you know, you stink, you're not good enough, you know, you know get better. you know you're you're yeah know you have to You have to be able to look at yourself honestly and understand where am I today? And and I wasn't in the same place now that I was when I was 19 years old So I could sit down and play and and and enjoy playing with a bunch of of adults.
00:27:23
Speaker
But I also made the decision that while I'm having a good time playing, if I should stop having fun, I'm going to stop.
00:27:34
Speaker
So it's really that kind of understanding of yourself and saying, what are what are my boundaries here? what's what the shell What's the shell that I'm going to live with here? And that is, i want to be curious. I want to enjoy. I want to learn.
00:27:49
Speaker
i want to do things that bring me joy. And if it's if it's not joyful, I'm not doing it. yeah Yeah, that makes perfect sense. and i I was going to ask, I know you said we've all got the tools that we need to move on in our life. we've We've all learned skills. We've learned lessons.
00:28:09
Speaker
Are there some things, and you've said now that there are, are there some things that we need to maybe unlearn in order to successfully retire? Yes. I think we have to unlearn things.
00:28:23
Speaker
our identity. We have to unlearn the ego aspect of ourselves. We have to let go of things that have no place in our in our world at this time.
00:28:40
Speaker
And we have to be critical enough in our thinking to say, to look at our stories, our beliefs, and and ask ourselves, do we still need this?
00:28:52
Speaker
And if we don't, we need to reject it. Even if it flies in the face of decades and decades of our lives.
00:29:03
Speaker
It's like, okay, it was useful then. It's not useful now. It doesn't fit into. So let's say someone who was in the corporate world and their job was to, you know they started, and you know, and they climbed up the ladder and climbed over their colleagues and whatever to reach whatever level of vice president or CEO or whatever their title wound up being. Well, that level of,
00:29:35
Speaker
ah
00:29:39
Speaker
of having to crawl over other people is no longer necessary. We don't need that. We don't need to compete on that level. You know, and i' I'll go to the go to the gym and see these, you know, these people out on the pickleball court, you know looking like they want to kill someone, you know, on the other side. of the and I'm like, that doesn't look like fun to me.
00:30:04
Speaker
You know, it's like, it's so serious. Like, oh, if I don't win, you know, oh my, know, like what? Okay. So if you don't win- Tomorrow won't happen. Right. Exactly. and it's like, let's put things into perspective. And that is, we only have a certain amount of time on this on this earth, in this iteration of ourselves, right?
00:30:28
Speaker
We know that many people are you know going to go through different stages of retirement. yeah you used to talk about this you know in in my life as a financial life planner. was you know It's like you retire, you're in this what they call the go-go stage, and then they have the slow-go stage, and they have the no-go stage. And when you hit that no-go stage, you know you're pretty much you know in that assisted living type of situation um where you really are dependent um But during the go-go stage, what do you want to use that energy, that vitality, that those things that where you can make a difference in the world? And when I say difference in the world, I'm not talking about curing world hunger.
00:31:14
Speaker
i am talking about anything that brings goodness into the world, that brings something positive into to another person, to your neighbor, to a friend, to a loved one, to a relative to whoever's life you touch.
00:31:30
Speaker
And those things i believe have a big impact on the world as a whole, because it, it does, it changes people's state. I, I told the story, actually I, I, I even, I wrote about it in one of my blogs is I've been doing Pilates, which I, I did years ago when I stopped doing it and I started doing it again. And so I'm taking lessons from the Pilates instructor and we're out actually in this area where other people are. And so it's not, it's not an enclosed space.
00:32:00
Speaker
And, And I'm sitting, and I'm working hard and I'm sweating and I'm grunting and whatever. And and this guy comes over to me and he leans over he goes, you are doing a great job. He goes, He goes, it's really impressive. I didn't know this guy from a hole in the wall.
00:32:16
Speaker
And i could probably, and I didn't my glasses on, so I really couldn't see him very well. And he lifted my day. Yeah. Right. And it cost him nothing.
00:32:29
Speaker
right it it it But it it it changed my day um in such a positive way. And you know he turned around, walked away. I've never seen him again. i probably wouldn't recognize him because, as I said, I don't have my glasses on. But um those are small things that make a difference.
00:32:48
Speaker
It's like being a Walmart greeter. Everybody laughs at them, but hey, you walk ah in and somebody smiles at you and says, good morning. That's great. Yeah. i was ah but One of the guys in the Chapter X community decided you know he he belongs to this gym, and they were looking for someone to come in early in the morning and hand out towels when people come in.
00:33:08
Speaker
And he said, I'd love to do that. He's a very social guy. he gets paid minimum wage. He was a high-powered executive. And he was having the time of his life, you know, because he's ah he's an early riser. It's not about the money.
00:33:22
Speaker
He says, I'd do it for nothing. He goes, and you go, and all these people that I know and hi and chit-chat and bu blah, blah, blah. He goes, it's it's fabulous. you know it's just ah you know? It's just a small example of how you can make a difference in the world by just doing things that are joyful.
Joy and Meaning in Retirement
00:33:43
Speaker
And that's one of the reasons why I put and in the book title, because without joy in what you do, why do it? Yeah. Right? If it's a should, if it's out of guilt or obligation, why do it?
00:34:00
Speaker
and's I figured the first word that you should take out of your vocabulary after you retire is should. Yeah. Yeah. As I say, you should take out. But yeah it should be gone because you don't need it. You don't need Either do it or don't do it. Right.
00:34:16
Speaker
Me and Yoda. Right. ask Exactly. Ask yourself those important questions. Is this meaningful in my life? right? Is this important?
00:34:27
Speaker
Is this something that brings me joy? Is this something that aligns with my values? And that's one of the things I dig in pretty deep very deeply in the book is this whole idea of this exploration of what do I really care about?
00:34:40
Speaker
Because if all your life, your professional life has been aimed at making money, that's not what you care about. right? it's it's now yeah Now that you're not making money or you're you're or that's not a significant part of your life, now it's like, okay, well, what can I do?
00:35:02
Speaker
How can I use my skills my skills, my abilities, my knowledge, my experience in a way that's positive, in a way that makes a difference, in a way that helps others, and in a way that aligns with my values? Right?
00:35:16
Speaker
You know, i'm I'm super fortunate in that I have, ah my daughter lives locally and I've got, and with two of my granddaughters. Unfortunately, my son lives in Chicago with my third granddaughter.
00:35:31
Speaker
Because evidently my nobody in my family knows how to make boys. and Which is fine because I adore my three granddaughters. They are the heaven and earth to me.
00:35:44
Speaker
um And it gives me so much joy. Doing something as simple as my daughter says, can you bring her to school? The the one in preschool, can you bring her to school tomorrow?
00:35:57
Speaker
I would love to. And we have the best time. We're together for a half an hour and we're talking and we're laughing and i'm being silly and she's being silly and i get a hug and I get a kiss and spent a half hour with someone who means the world to me.
00:36:17
Speaker
Fills you up with joy, just like it should. Completely. Completely.
00:36:24
Speaker
So let's talk a little bit about your book. Okay. And I know i took a look, I got an advanced copy, and i did take a look at it. And you've got all kinds of different chapters. You've got some um exercises to do. You've got chapters on you know gerontology and and psychology and couples.
00:36:44
Speaker
how do you How do you want your readers to go through it? Do you think that they need to go through chapter by chapter, or can they bounce back and forth? Yeah. Well, the the last several chapters, i I was blessed enough to have ah a gert a a gerontologist write a chapter who's also part of the Chapter X community, Dr. David Bernstein, a psychologist, ah an exercise ah ah specialist, and ah And a woman who specializes in, in ah she's a ah social worker and therapist ah who who does a lot of work with couples. And I asked them to um to donate a chapter.
00:37:28
Speaker
And they all and the the four of them wrote chapters, and that's and towards the back of the book. And they could and a reader can you know read those anytime they want. The rest of it it is progressive, I believe. I try to lay it out where you start in the beginning and you go through the exercises because I feel it's like peeling an onion of getting down to the core.
00:37:52
Speaker
ah There are things that I want people to experience as they read. And these exercises are, um and this is based on my coaching practice and i ah ah do a workshop and ah and things like that, is to bring people through an experience of their own life that they can sit and think about and work through. And it's meant to be a process at their own timing. And what I said in in each before each of the exercises, make sure you have time, make sure you have clarity, make sure you have don't rush through this and don't do it on the computer, do it freehand.
00:38:37
Speaker
um you know because you're going to you're it's you're going to go deeper that way. And take all the time you need. And then after you've done them, done each exercise, think about them.
00:38:51
Speaker
Go back. And if you something else occurs to you, amend it or add to it. um I want it to be a roadmap of building skills and self-knowledge ah So that people can then ah look at them look at their life in this chapter in a different way, in a way that's a little that's more informed. You're not thinking how you thought in your work life. You're thinking you're erasing some of that stuff you don't need anymore.
00:39:27
Speaker
You know, clarifying, what do I value? Why do I value that? What's so important? one are the you know One of the exercises i have people do, and this is towards the end, is I ask them to write a eulogy that would come from a spouse, a child, a grandchild, a friend, a colleague from work. What do you want them to say about you?
00:39:51
Speaker
And and i feel like that's an important exercise from the standpoint of, if you know what you you want people to say about you, now go live it. right? Now you know with great clarity who you need to be to attain or to work towards attaining those those last words that of people's thoughts about you.
00:40:15
Speaker
ah you You now see it. do you find Have you talked to people who have tried that writing the eulogy exercise? Have you talked to them afterwards about how difficult it is to write what you want people to say about you?
00:40:32
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we've, we've talked about it and ah after they have enough time to recover from writing ah because, and I, you know, listen,
00:40:44
Speaker
if you don't get a emotional, you know, the And you really need to start somewhere else. You really need to start with maybe some, you really need to maybe talk to a therapist and and understand the fact that you know if you're blocking these things, that if you're ah unable to really care you know dig into these things on a deep level,
00:41:09
Speaker
you know This is an opportunity for us to be more kind of ah contemplative, to be more thoughtful. where and We don't have you know someone chasing us 10, 12 hours a day.
00:41:23
Speaker
ah We don't have deadlines. We don't have you know pressures of work and of responsibility. The responsibility now is to live your life to the fullest extent that is meaningful to you.
00:41:38
Speaker
And that doesn't mean you need to replicate 12-hour workday or an eight-hour workday. You need to curate your day based on how are you feeling? What's your energy like? How did you sleep last night? What are the things that are most important that get done? I know for me, i you know, I have a, a, a very set exercise regimen.
00:42:03
Speaker
That's very important to me, but I also know that if I am not feeling great, I'm going to modify. Okay. I'm not going to just because I'm going to tough it through and, you know, and drag myself through it.
00:42:17
Speaker
Uh, But I'm also very cognizant of the fact that there are things that I want to get done. There are things I need to get done. ah There are responsibilities that I've accepted that are important to me.
00:42:30
Speaker
And I look at my day as, okay, I'm going to put two or three things a day onto my calendar, but no more. I want the time that if I want to go take for take a walk or I want to read or I want to do some writing, ah I'm going to do that.
00:42:49
Speaker
I don't want to get to the end of the day and feel, oh my God, I i need a drink because I'm exhausted. i just not that That to me is not retirement.
00:43:00
Speaker
My husband ah commented recently that I spend more time in front of my computer working on things now than I did when I was working on things for my job. said But the you know the difference is now it's because I want to be there, not because I have to be there. Exactly. Exactly. i you know, when I write, as I said, I write ah three blog pieces a week and-
00:43:26
Speaker
I might sit and write, I might go to a coffee shop and write 12, you know, and um now I'm done for the month pretty much. ah And it's like, how do I feel? i've I've accumulated a bunch of ideas and now I'm going to sit and write, but I don't feel like, Oh, it's Thursday. I have to go. i have to go. Right.
00:43:46
Speaker
I want to create a schedule that gives me the flexibility. ah and and the um and to make sure it's doing things that I want to do.
00:43:59
Speaker
i know i would rather i would rather sit and read a book than um feel like forcing myself to do something I don't want to do that's not enjoyable or not joyful or not meaningful to me.
00:44:13
Speaker
That's taken a lot a lot of time to learn that go and do something that you enjoy instead of something you feel you need to do. You were talking about the exercise routine. I used to get up every morning and and exercise before I'd go to work.
00:44:27
Speaker
And then work went away. And, well, I don't feel like getting up at five o'clock in the morning and exercising right now. Maybe I'll do it at eight or maybe it'll be two in the afternoon. and Right.
00:44:39
Speaker
And, and. That's all good, right? As long as you can train your mind to relax and accept that. Exactly. That's the big switch is there isn't a schedule now. You've got to create a new one. Exactly. Exactly. And and and's to me, that's honoring yourself.
00:44:57
Speaker
Because when we have to do something, okay, we're going to tough it out. We're going to push through. We're going to do what we have to do.
00:45:08
Speaker
But we don't have to do that anymore. So we don't have to live by an an unneeded set of pressures that we had before.
00:45:20
Speaker
It's pretty simple. So when people finish reading your book, what do you hope that they will feel or do differently?
Living Joyfully: Understanding Values
00:45:29
Speaker
Oh, have great hope that they will have really looked at themselves, looked at their experience, understand their their values, and give themselves, you know, it's like give themselves, i hope that the book gives them a ladder that they can climb down off their own backs, you know, and and just...
00:45:54
Speaker
live with with with joy, with curiosity. You know, I have so many things that I want to do. And my biggest problem is finding the time.
00:46:07
Speaker
You know, I had every intention of signing up for ah a language course at a local university because I really love languages. i i'm Not algebra, languages. um So I
00:46:23
Speaker
i And then I got caught up writing this book, which I really never intended to do. but So that kind of got washed away, and I just got a notification.
00:46:34
Speaker
and I said, okay, well, I don't think it's going to happen this spring, so I've got to aim towards the summer or the fall. And I feel a little badly about it because I really want to do it, but it's like, okay, I'll do it in the fall. you know so But you have to have you really want to have to have things that you're interested in exploring.
00:46:58
Speaker
And once you explore them, you might find out, nah, nah, not for me. And that's okay. It's not failure. And that's the idea. That's the mindset that that we need is this growth mindset to be able to say, okay, I've learned something. I learned something that I didn't, you know, it's like Thomas Edison, you know, the the the thousand things that didn't make a light bulb. Uh,
00:47:22
Speaker
And that's okay. It's that curiosity. And we need to remain curious because if we're so fixed in our thinking that we know everything and that there's nothing left for us to learn, there's nothing left for us to experience, um that's kind of sad. Life gets pretty dark. Yeah, really dark.
00:47:41
Speaker
And that's not the world I want to live in. um i have a bunch of hobbies and things that I do that I love doing. And it gives me the greatest amount of joy. yeah I'm ah a home coffee roaster.
00:47:55
Speaker
And ah to me, and like and i i you know if someone says, oh can can I say, sure, absolutely. happy to share. i yeah Someone asked me whether I would consider roasting for their coffee shop. And I said, absolutely not.
00:48:11
Speaker
I'm not looking for a business. Yeah. Then it becomes a job. Exactly. Exactly. So I can sit there and roast up a bunch of coffee, but you know now I'm going to have to meet your deadline.
00:48:24
Speaker
Thanks anyway. I think that's the nicest thing about retirement is you get to do the things you want when you want. Exactly. Exactly. And and you get to you get to to put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together to make the picture you want. you know We've got all these little pieces here here, here, here, and here, and we get to put it together and create the vision of what we want our life to look like. you know if If you love to travel,
00:48:57
Speaker
okay, great. Go explore. What aspect of travel? you know we i had My wife and I were on a ah trip and we met, we were on a ah ah cruise that went from ah Hamburg, Germany to Lisbon around the ah the Atlantic. And we were fortunate enough to meet the the guest lecturer on the ship and he was a retired diplomat.
00:49:23
Speaker
yeah And his stories were amazing. And his lectures were even more amazing because he was able to bring the history and the culture and things together as you go look at some of these these places that that I've never been to before. So it's you know to me, it's where's the there needs to be some wonder in it.
00:49:47
Speaker
you know i i There needs to be some magic to it. I guess is the right word is to be able to say, wow, that's, that's amazing. That's beautiful. That's interesting. That's, you know, and that, that to me is what life is.
00:50:06
Speaker
Even just, wow, I never thought of that before. Yeah. yeah Bring something new in and that's, yeah that's important. Yeah. It changes, it changes the whole picture, right? Yeah. When you bring in new information or new ways of thinking about things, um,
00:50:22
Speaker
Yeah, we we had this experience. We were in Spain and we wound up in this vermouth bar where they made you know they had this homemade vermouth.
00:50:35
Speaker
I'm going, wow, this is really good and i'm not much of a drinker. ah And i was telling talking to a friend of mine who's actually the guy who got me into roasting coffee.
00:50:46
Speaker
And he goes, oh, you like that? i go, yeah, it was really amazing. So he sends me a recipe of how to make it because he's made it. So that's my next project. okay
00:50:59
Speaker
um Michael, we could sit here probably all afternoon and talk about the wonderful things that retirement lets you do. um But how can people find you if they want to find out more about
Joining the Chapter X Community
00:51:12
Speaker
you?
00:51:12
Speaker
So they can find me at www.michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L, m i c h a e l middle initial F, as in Frank, K-A-Y.com.
00:51:24
Speaker
And they can ah find out about Chapter X community and sign up for the emails and the blogs and whatever notifications. It's all free for whoever wants to participate. And I'm happy to have people join and um come to the monthly zoom meetings or whatever and offer their opinions.
00:51:49
Speaker
Always welcome. And you, you said you're, you are primarily focused on men. Can anybody come to your zoom meetings or just men? Just men.
00:52:01
Speaker
okay Okay. I have had women join, but what they did was they um they really they they wanted to hear what was going on and they kept their camera off.
00:52:16
Speaker
Oh, that's interesting. and i yeah Yeah. But but it's it's what I don't want to have happen is for... You know, because men act differently around women in terms of their own self-consciousness of being judged and things like that.
00:52:32
Speaker
and And, you know, because let's face it, I mean, men are not that well socialized. as a rule. you know They might be good on the golf course or in a boardroom or whatever doing what they but in terms of feeling that sense of safety and security in ah in just talking about their situation or themselves, they're more reticent in a mixed group.
00:53:01
Speaker
Yeah. That's understandable. So are women. you just You just can't be yourself the same way. Right. Okay. And I will make sure that there is a link to your website and link to your podcast and probably a ah little blurb about your book as well.
00:53:19
Speaker
Cool. That's awesome. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining me today. Jackie, it was my pleasure, my honor. And as you said, we could we could probably talk about this all afternoon. And I'm super grateful for your time and your interest and in inviting me in.
00:53:38
Speaker
And that's it for this episode of Beyond Retirement. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. I hope you enjoyed it. To check out the video interviews, please go to my YouTube channel at bit.ly forward slash beyond retirement. That's B-I-T dot L-Y forward slash beyond retirement. Be sure to subscribe so you won't miss any new episodes.