Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d come down with cataphylaxis if you infected me with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate with what’s up. Hey Tony, this week we have consciousness and intentionality in work and retirement. Elizabeth Zelika Parsons wrote a book for retirement planning that has value for anyone at any age who aspires to fulfillment and joy through all the stages and pages of their professional and personal lives. She walks you through the value of play, embracing new mindsets, constantly evolving, sovereignty over time, the power of full engagement, managing energy, not time, challenges to identity, like marriage and parenting, and a lot more. Elizabeth’s book is Encore. On Tony’s take 2. You’re listening to a top 10 podcast. Here is consciousness and intentionality in work and retirement. It’s a pleasure to welcome Elizabeth Zallika Parsons to nonprofit Radio. Elizabeth is a retirement transition expert, lawyer and author of the book Encore A High Achiever’s Guide to Thriving in Retirement. The book is based on her retirement planning coaching practice on Corio. You’ll find Elizabeth on LinkedIn. And, uh, by the way, I hope she accepts my connection invitation. I just sent it recently. Uh, and her practice is at on Corico.com. Elizabeth Seleka Parton’s Parsons, EP. Welcome to nonprofit Radio. Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here. It’s a pleasure to have you. Something, uh, we haven’t covered in the show description. I’m gonna allay fears that this is only for retirement planning because I, a lot of what I would like to talk about, maybe all of what I’d like to talk about is Uh, stuff that has general applicability, I think, like time and play and um evolving as a person and a professional and so, so, uh, I don’t want the uh non-boomers, you know, be tuning out. So uh I’ve, I’ve written the show description in such a way that uh they shouldn’t. Uh, but there’s also value for boomers who, uh, like I am a young, I’m a young baby, young. 60, only 63, so young boomer, there’s value for boomers as well who might be planning their own retirement or might not, you know, even so, you could work, you could be 63 and work another 10 or 15 years and Etc. We’re gonna talk about all that. You should, you should probably tell your own story about being a high-powered lawyer. Milbank, I did recognize used to Milbank, Tweed, you know, New York City, Lower Manhattan, right? Wall Street firm, or if not literally Wall Street, certainly Lower Manhattan white shoe, I don’t know, 180 year old firm or something like this, you were at Millbank. So Tucson, I know nobody in Tucson recognized the, the firm name, but, uh, but coming from the New Jersey, New York area, I did. But tell, please tell your story and maybe you can parlay that into why uh anxiety about retirement is a, is a normal thing. I’d love to. Yes. Thanks for the invitation to do that. So, you know, I, um, I, I sort of targeted my book to the high achiever type. And I, I chuckle at myself for being that type, you know, since I was a very little person, I’ve always been a striver, and I’ve always wanted to climb the little ladders in front of me. And so I did that, uh, you know, and surprised myself and landed a job at one of these, these, you know, global law firms. And I was thrilled. I mean, I, and so I I brought everything I had to that. I mean, I, it was, that’s what it takes, you know, it was an 80 hour a week undertaking. And, um, and it’s exciting and also exhausting, you know? And so for the better part of a decade, I poured myself into that career and, um, Didn’t really stop to ask myself if I could also manage having a family, but I just went ahead and did that. And one day I, you know, was increasingly aware that I was probably not gonna be able to do both of these things as well as I wanted to, and that if something were going to be sacrificed for me, it was gonna have to be my career. Now, I, I say that with no judgment about anybody else who decides they can’t juggle, because many people do. I just could not. I could not find that gear. So, when I decided to let go of my career, I explained it to myself and everybody else that I was front ending my retirement. In my mind, that held some sort of framework or explanation, because I was sort of borrowing against the future, right? Like my time. And I, I thought to myself, as long as I have enough money, you know, to cover the next 5 years or so, I’ll figure this all out, you know, it’s just financial security is the only thing I need to know I have in order to make this change. And so, I sort of, uh, sauntered into my future without a thought about how this was going to change my identity, how my life structure was going to work, that I was going to lose my community, I was gonna lose all my sources of intellectual stimulation. And don’t get me wrong, it was lovely to be a mother, but the 3 year old and the 18 month old weren’t really, you know, throwing the thorny intellectual problems my way. So, I, I sort of woke up 6 months after I made this massive change, and I was absolutely lost. And I was lost in a way that was frightening because I’d never felt that way before. And it was, I, I was losing my self-confidence in the sense of being lost, because I didn’t even know where to start. To explain it to myself or to unwind it or to solve it. So, it, you know, fast forward to now having done this work for 15 years with people who are really truly at the brink of retirement, feeling very unsettled about who am I going to be, how’s my life going to work? How do I stay engaged. All of the work I do was built into a program that came from my own efforts over several years to unpack this and create methods for beginning to shape those answers before you land into the situation where you have only questions and no answers. So, I, you know, I did live this change in a very uncomfortable way. Happy I landed on my feet eventually. But I thought, gosh, I, I really had some blind spots when I did what I did. Um, so, yeah, that’s a little bit of my background on that. And uh about the, the anxiety around, you know, the, and again, broadening, so that’s not only for boomers, but, you know, and uh personal identity revolving around professional title, uh, professional identity. That to help us, help us unpack that and why that’s not so healthy. Yeah, absolutely. So, and, and I agree. So my, I experienced that change at age 35. So I truly do want to reinforce. I think ahead of any major life change, these issues are theoretically relevant and often very relevant because we as human beings are, we, we wanna belong to things, you know, we wanna belong places, and a huge part of our identities is usually shaped. By the roles we play in our lives, and the communities or groups we assign ourselves to or belong to. And so anybody who invests a great deal of time and energy into a career or even into a role like motherhood, you know, when those roles begin to change or disappear. It literally can feel like you have lost who you are, because it is such a conscious way that we understand ourselves. We all have an existential identity as well, those enduring aspects of ourselves that are, that we’re always there and will always be there, even as they flow and, you know, reshape themselves. But the roles are so powerful in our own sense of who we are. And so when they change or go away, I think it is very useful to understand that. That can feel like an existential threat. And if you even if you can’t name it, you know, it feels like you’re gonna lose you. And so we often work with people around, no, no, there’s a you under there. Let’s dig in on that. And then let’s also think about how, how new roles that tie back to existing ones can can help you bridge into new spaces, new contexts, so that you feel a sense of yourself moving forward and evolving, but not disappearing. Uh, in a, in a moment that is really just for boomers, I think, uh, we wanna debunk this myth that it’s all about financial planning and that if you have enough money. That’s all it takes. And, and I get a lot of the advertising at 63, again, young, baby boomer, but young, young baby boomer. Um, I, so I’m, I’m guessing, you know, with the sophistication of, uh, online marketing that we have now that I did not grow up with, you know, probably folks, uh, Gen X, Z, well, maybe X, but millennials and Zs and certainly alpha, they’re not getting seeing anything about retirement. But the way it’s promoted to me is if you have enough money, you’ll be fine. You’ll walk into the sunset, your health will be perfect. Uh, it’ll be sunshine and rainbows every single day after your retirement. So let’s, uh, uh, cut that myth off at its knees. Yes, absolutely. That is one of the major reasons I wrote the book, because I think that we are marketed to somewhat unhelpfully. Uh, around this inflection point. And, you know, first of all, a life of pure leisure is rarely satisfying. It, it’s just not how humans thrive. You know, leisure has meaning when it’s intention with effort or engagement. You know, it’s, it’s, you need the yin and the yang of those things. So, it’s nice to imagine 30 Saturdays in a row, but 365. That’s, that’s, you know, that starts to make you go, whoa, whoa, whoa. So, I, I always remind people that you’re still going to want to experience, you know, growth and challenge. You’re gonna need to reconnect with something that feels purposeful. You’re gonna wanna keep your communities alive, challenge your mind, you know, have problems to solve or, you know, skills to acquire. I mean, that’s what keeps life spicy and interesting. So it’s, I, I never want to diminish that money is important, right? It’s, it’s the security can be a wonderful foundation, but I remind people you really ought to think about this moment as more of a graduation. Not a, you know, not a withdrawal into less. But frankly, it should be a graduation into even more. I mean, not, not that you have to run off and go get busy, but there’s all sorts of opportunity in front of you at this moment in life, you’ve finally got some fresh freedom, you’ve got some financial security, you’ve got skills, wisdom. You know, all sorts of things. So it’s quite an interesting moment to say, what would I like to make of this? as opposed to, oh, I guess, you know, now I, I simply play all day. Um, and people who opt into that as an experiment, I think rapidly discover it is not really a recipe for well-being. Well, you even, uh, have a couple of anecdotes about people who are drinking in the middle of the day because it starts off like, oh, I can, I can have a glass of wine or a beer and then it becomes excessive and, and detrimental obviously to health and physical and mental health and relationships and everything, you know, so too much, too much leisure, right? You like you say 365 Saturdays, um, OK, so back to, OK, that was a little digression for the older folks who, you know. Uh, who get the financial, who get the marketing from all the financial services companies that assure you that all it takes is enough money and we’ll help you determine what enough is. Of course it’s probably never in their minds it’s probably never enough because you want to keep feeding their feeding their fee structure, uh, but, and that’s all it’ll take, right, so, uh, uh, so that was for the older folks who get that marketing relentlessly. um, so you talk about identity bridging. And, and life restructuring. And again, I, you know, I’d like to keep in mind that these, I, I, the way I read, read the thing, read the thing, the way I read, I read the thing like it was a comic strip. Yeah, I read, you know, you put a comic strip together, you did, you spent a half an hour. No, uh, the way I took your book is that I, I think there’s a lot of value for folks who are not retirement age, but still in, again like we talked about identity and some other, some other subjects that you’re very intentional about, but So, you know, trying to be more inclusive than just the retirement group, uh, there were the pre-retirement, you know, the retirement plan planners, um, identity bridging and, um, and, and, and life restructuring. Yeah, yeah. So, yes, and, and those things, I agree with you, those two items I think are in play. Every time anybody faces an inflection point, almost at any age, right? I mean, even very young people stepping into adulthood or shifting their careers or going from single people to married people. I mean, all of these. Moments in time mean that our identity underpinnings are going to be challenged in new ways. And the quote unquote way our life works is going to be probably reshaped. And my view, after going through it with less of an intentional approach, is that having some intention around those things. Makes those changes much, much easier to navigate and actually can move them from. Sort of unsettling to exciting, because you start to imagine, Wait a minute, I’m actually on an adventure here that I am offering. I’m the one deciding how I want this to work. Instead of sort of waiting for things to show up and then find them confusing, and then sort of find yourself in problem solving mode, you know, for a long, long time before you resettle. And so, I think about You know, the questions of who do I wanna be in this next chapter. It’s a little more useful than what do I want to do? You know, we need to figure out who we want to be. And, and by that I mean, what are the things we value? What are we trying to be more of in our lives? You know, are we, you know, what’s our formula to be resilient in the world? And how do we function, forget the roles, you know, who are we under all those roles? And how do we want to Sort of bring those pieces forward and then think about the roles that we wanna play in life and how we want to play them. And similarly, life structure to me is often driven by the major thing we’re doing in life at that time. So it could be school. You know, more often it is a career. And, and so usually we are focused on something significant. A monolithic undertaking. It could just be raising your family, but, you know, it’s something that asks uh most of our energy. Uh it, it’s very demanding and therefore, we organize most of everything else we care about around the edges. And we’ve got to recognize when that monolithic. Undertaking diminishes or changes or goes away. If your whole life scaffolding has been built around that, it’s very, it’s a little mess messy jumble there for a little while. If you don’t stop and think, how am I gonna redesign things? I mean, And that’s going to be driven by how much freedom you have, how much choice you have. What are the known knowns? What are the things you’ve got to show up for every day? And, but how do you optimize the rest of your day so that your energy and your use of time are as much as possible intentional. They’re things you’re choosing. And we talked to people about, you know, your physical well-being, your relationship world, your, are you working on things you find fulfilling? Do you have time in your life for contemplation? I mean, these are things that In the thrust of middle adulthood even, we often just barely get time to make, you know, to think about. And it’s, it’s worth asking yourself, even if you only grab 15 minutes a day to sit with yourself, can you make that happen? So, I agree. I think anybody who can focus on these things with some intention, no matter what age they are, will, will likely have a, a sense of greater well-being. And greater flourishing than if you are just sort of head down, going like mad, you know, until you claps at the end of every day, which, which is where I found myself when I left my career. I, I love your metaphor of the scaffolding because it can be taken down methodically or, you know, a vehicle could crash into it and it could, could tumbling and be be devastating. You got it. Um, you have throughout the book, you, you cite a lot of, um, you share a lot of questions that you ask your coaching clients, share some of those questions. You, you touched on them a little bit about resilience, but specifically, what, what are some of the questions you ask? Uh, your clients to, to ponder as they’re working through, you know, identity and, and, you know, life restructuring. Absolutely. So, yes, I’ll I’ll share several. They’re, um, they, they’re quite thought provoking, you know, and, and hopefully some of your listeners may well may take some of these and sit down with them and think, see what comes up. But one question I, we love to ask, you know, everybody is to think of three people they admire. And, you know, we don’t care whether they’re known to them personally, you know, living, dead, his historical figures, even, you know, mythical figures. But just three people that you have noticed somewhere along the way and thought, gosh, you know, I really admire that person, even if it’s not everything about them. So we sort of take those names down and then we really Intentionally ask them to explain why. You know, tell us why. What are the things you’ve noticed? And we’ll, we’ll note those words down. But it’ll be things like, gosh, he was such a wonderful listener. You know, we would uplift people, or he was inspiring, or, um, you know, he’s so wonderful with language or whatever these things are. So we make our list and once we have reviewed, or we’ve got our list. What we explain to people is typically the things we admire in others are the very things we would love to bring alive more in ourselves. And it doesn’t mean that, you know, it’s, it’s gonna be a snap your fingers, and I will be able to embody these things, because often they are aspirational. They’re things that aren’t as alive in us. And so we see them alive in someone else, and we say, oh. I would love to be more like that. But what that collection of attributes is in, in psychological terms is your self ideal. And whether you’re conscious of it or not, we all have a self ideal. We all do walk around with a set of attributes we’re sort of always trying to grow closer to. And it’s very interesting when you actually catalog them and look at them, and then start to say to yourself, Now, that’s interesting. How can I bring more of that alive in the way that I live? You know, and maybe that will influence the next role that I consider taking or just it’ll influence the way I approach, uh, the role of parent or friend. But people love that exercise because it is a non-obvious insight. And, I mean, almost no one we work with has ever thought about that. But the second they see the list, they go, oh my gosh, that’s my list, you know, I, and it’s kind of exciting. So that’s a great example of one that if I, if I answered that with Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and the Great Pumpkin, would, would you refer me for therapy? Yes, he goes into a special category. Yeah, but, um, more, yeah, a couple more, couple more your client questions. These are, these are excellent. These are, it’s it’s introspection, it’s it’s inspection, it’s intentionality, you know, it’s thoughtfulness. Yeah, I mean being thoughtful to yourself, being self-aware is the thoughtfulness of thoughtfulness to others is essential, but being thoughtful in your own. You, you, like I said, your own life, your own identity, you know, you can make the life that you that you aspire to. That’s right. So, so yeah, so, yeah. Yeah, another great question that, um, I think always reveals a, you know, great insight for, for this purpose. I will ask people to tell me a story that has these elements in it. So I’ll say, I want you to think of a story where you were doing something you’re just naturally good at. You know, it sort of comes to you easily, and you really enjoy it. It’s a kick in the pants to do it. And the third element is, in the process of doing this thing, you became aware that you helped somebody. So there’s a feedback loop of somebody getting help in a way that was really rewarding for you. And you sort of get that spring in your step in that moment, right? Like, ah, this is my sweet spot. I love doing this thing. And I love it even more when they’re small stories. You know, I’m not looking for that. I was leading a boardroom full of 60 people and I was this, you know, I’m looking for, like, hey, I showed up and helped my neighbor with this problem he had. And, you know, I’m just really good at that thing and it’s. And I could tell he was really grateful. But I, I love those stories. And I, I, I try to get people to think of several, and then think, what is the theme underneath of these things? Because that for you is a very animating thing to do. It animates you, it energizes you, and it feels purposeful. And so often we can find examples of these stories that occurred in work working life and personal life, ideally. And there’s a theme there. And when we can unpack that theme, that’s another very rewarding insight because the question is, how do you go do that some more, you know? And, and it’s all of a sudden we’re in the world of possibility again, instead of the world of things ending. We’re in the world of new beginnings. Like, whoa, you’re right. That, I love doing that. Where do I go do that? And it turns out, I mean, if you’re brought up in your theme, you can do it all kinds, in all kinds of places. And, and, you know, so it’s helping people connect to these items that are not, I mean, they’re so internal to us. We, they aren’t obvious to us, right? So it almost takes getting out of your picture a little bit to see that. But the minute you do, It just gives you this little boost, and you think, I, I love doing that and I’m gonna go do that some more somewhere else. And so that’s another great example. Yeah, these are brilliant. Yeah. Um, let’s talk about play. The value of play, so, so underrated, you know, we can’t play after we’re 9 years old or whatever, you know, that’s tragic, that’s tragic. So, you know, there’s other forms of play, um. And, and, uh, why don’t you talk about Harvey Oldbars. I, I nicknamed him. That’s not his name, but you, you give his first name and he, you know, so tell the story of Harvey Oldbars and then, and, and play, what, what adults play for adults. Absolutely. So I’ll. I’ll tell you I’ll explain a little bit about some of the research, and then I’ll share that story because I love that story too. Um, Stuart Brown was the author of a book called Play. He was studying the way that, you know, mammals, including humans, use play to continue to grow and develop in a very safe way. And the beautiful thing about play. Is it’s, it’s usually low stakes, right? It, we’re not doing it to survive. We’re not doing it to put food on our table. We’re doing it to have fun, to grow, to experiment, and it’s, it’s an absolute necessity. And the development continued health of the mammalian brain. And that’s as true for humans as anyone else. And you can see it in young mammals, right? Young animals. They play incessantly. They’re learning to hunt. They’re learning to pounce. And so, if you can take that analogy and apply it to yourself as a human being, you realize, oh, interesting. Play is not this, you know, silly thing. You must set down so that all you can do now is work. It is a way to keep growing in a, in a relatively low risk way that’s also enjoyable. And so I loved, yeah, I won’t take too much time going into it, but the book’s worth reading for anybody out there listening. But the final thing I’ll say is he, he has identified what he calls play archetypes, and there were 8 of them. And so his, his book is great. It’s sort of, and then you can sort of figure out where do I fit, you know, am I an explorer? Am I a competitor? I, anyway, all these different ways people play as adults. Well, we always raise that with our clients because many of our clients are divorced from any conscious sense of play in their lives. And when we remind them that there’s actual value to this in terms of your own brain development and health, they think, oh, OK, that’s interesting. But it also opens up an entire world of new activities that are, you know, really fun and energizing and interesting, but it helps combat that sense of I’m squandering my time. So one of our clients was sharing with us that When he was working, and he was a lawyer and he had a very intense career, so he was always traveling, and anytime he was on a business trip, as soon as he could finally break free, he would find himself going. To the sort of oldest, most local bar he could find. And whatever little weird town he was in. And it wasn’t, he wasn’t going to, you know, slam drinks all night, but he’d, you know, sip a beer. But what he’s really going for was he wanted to understand the history of this place. How did this bar come to be? who owned it? Who owns it now? What’s the, where are the stories? What’s it meant to the community? He just was fascinated with these places. And I got this sort of I thought, well, what if that’s play. You’re just, you’re playing. That’s a fun little exploration. And he said, Oh, absolutely, you’re right. And it’s the conversations that I’m there for. And so as we talked more, another thing that came up is that he, he loved, he loved being a photographer. So he was, you know, just sort of a photographer on his travels. And anyway, the long and short of it was, we developed this idea together that one of his new Ways of engaging would be to be intentional about traveling the US, finding the oldest bars, maybe in the country, choose 20 or something, go visit them intentionally, set up interviews, photograph them, tell a little vignette. And maybe put a book together about this. Maybe even started as a series of articles. He, he lit up like the sun. I mean, this was sort of like the bulls Eye idea. So that is one of the things he went off to do. And it was And it was so fun and enriching. And frankly, I think the, the bars he was reaching out to and the people he was reaching out to were so honored, you know, that somebody was interested in what they were up to. So it’s that kind of thing that I think can come out of the conversation about play, because often I think we dismiss those things as, oh, that’s, you know, that’s squandering time, that’s not valuable. No, no, no, those things are full of gold. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. You’re listening to a top 10 podcast, Million podcasts at millionpodcasts.com. Put us as a top 10 podcast on their fundraising list and on their nonprofit list. So, I’m grateful to them. Thank you very much to Million podcasts for Recognizing the show, um, you know, you’ll find others on there, of course, you know, somebody’s got to fill out, uh, 1 through 9 so that we could be in the top 10. Uh, but, you know, those other ones, yeah, hm. Uh, they’re OK. They’re OK. You, you wanna, you, you’re at the right place. Let’s just put it that way. You’re at the right place right now, listening to a top 10 podcast. Thank you very much, Million podcasts. And thank you for always, thank you for listening to nonprofit Radio. You put us in the top 10. Thank you. And that is Tony’s take too. Kate. Congratulations, Uncle Tony. Congratulations, uh, associate producer Kate Martignetti. It’s a team, it’s a team. Plus all our plus all our other team members. Mark Silverman, our web guy, everybody you say at the end, Susan Chavez, social media, Claire Meyerhoff, creative, everybody, everybody. We’ve got Beu but loads more time. Here’s the rest of consciousness and intentionality in work and retirement with Elizabeth Zallika Parsons. This is very related to something else you talk about is embracing new mindsets that we’re, you know, we’re, we’re evolving, uh, you know, so. Is there any, is there any more detail you wanna add about, uh, mindsets then, you know, beyond play? Yeah, yeah, there, well, of course there is. It’s a section of your book. There’s otherwise, otherwise there would be a heading, and then there would be this page intentionally left blank, but you didn’t do that. So yeah, so, so share, share some of you’re thinking about, yeah, mindsets, it’s just, it’s so natural from, from embracing adult play. Yes, definitely. So, I, I love the discussion about mindsets because I think that often. You know, and again, I don’t mean to make this overly connected to people who are leaving careers for actual retirement. But if you’ve been in any context where your role is to react to the content that other people are providing to you, it gets to be a strong habit, right? It’s, and so, if you’re in any sort of job. You know, you essentially are that. You, you show up every day and there’s stuff to do, right? Often that other people have given you. And so, you, you become a very good reactor. And I remind people of that. Almost always, you are a wonderful reactor, but you’ve got to become a creator if you want to be intentional about the life you’re about to, to lead. You’ve got to be the author of the content you’re gonna live. And it’s not that we don’t. You know, we don’t have the skill to do that. We just aren’t used to doing that. So it’s often a light bulb goes on for people when they realize, oh my gosh, the biggest mistake I could make is to sort of set down whatever it is I’ve been doing, and then just turn around with the same mindset and wait for stuff to appear. That’s like a recipe for feeling irrelevant and unempowered. Because if nobody’s continuing to serve up stuff to do. You feel you’re sort of wandering around aimlessly going, what do I do? What do I do with all this time, you know, you give the example of like a lawyer who says, well, I’ll be a mediator. Yeah, right, you know, I’ll just go find more stuff to react to. So that’s a mind shift shifts a mindset shift that I think is extremely valuable. Another one is to Embrace the idea of being an experimenter, as opposed to somebody who always gets it right. So, uh, you know, I will watch people entertain a fresh idea that they get initially excited by. And then their, their critical mind jumps right in there, you know, because they start, that part of their mind, which is often very valuable at work, starts telling them all of the reasons why this is just never gonna work, can’t do it. Total long shot. Stop it, don’t even go there, you know. And I say, no, no, no, set that guy down on the bench. You’ve got to go experiment. What is the cost of experimentation, right? It’s just data. You, you experiments really don’t succeed or Fail. They give you data. And so you shouldn’t ever go into it with the success failure thinking. Go into it as, oh, interesting. We’re gonna try this. We’re gonna get data, and then we’re gonna use that data to shape our next decision. That is a much more helpful mindset if you want to be expansive and you want to try new things. And similarly, you know, I think I just, I just something there? I’m, I’m always, I do a lot of fundraising. Consulting and training and I’m always saying, you know, when you’re gonna start a new program, think about how you can instead of why you can’t because the why you can’t, if you’re searching for the why you can’t, I could name a dozen off the top of my head. I don’t even have to know you’re nonprofit or you or you as a person. Uh, I don’t have the bandwidth. I don’t have the money. I don’t have the time. My family demands are too high. I just got a new house. uh, I just got new job responsibilities, uh, you know, the lawn has to be cut, you know, uh. How you can instead of why you can’t. I love that. I love that. With your permission, I may borrow that question from my own it’s it’s just it’s opening, you know, OK, let’s put aside, like you said, put aside the the reasons I can’t. Let’s think about the strategize over how we can, I can, OK, just a little. I love it. I love it. I think that is a genius way to frame it. And another, and on that vein, I mean, I will work with people who express a true desire to take on a new challenge. And I mean, a few that often come up or play some musical instrument that they never got around to trying or, you know, learn, you know, the martial arts or, you know, learn a new language. And, and they have a narrative about, uh, you know, I don’t like, I’m not gonna be good at that. I don’t think I’m gonna be good at that. And they’re so used to mastery, right? They’re, we all have a comfort zone. And when we’re in it, it’s so comfy in there, right? You know, we don’t, we don’t have to be comfortable, you talk a bit about how uncomfortable the comfort zone is. Yes. And so it’s leaving, it’s hard. We know, I mean, we get it. It’s hard. But if you can reframe this from I’m a master at the piano right now to, I’m a student of the piano. I’m a student of this language. Suddenly, you know how to be a good student. You don’t have to be a master yet. No one expects you to be, but you know how to be a good student of something. And if you can just take the value in that, that piece of identity can feel much more comfortable than, I’m a lousy guitar player, you know? No, you’re a great student of the guitar. Totally different mindset, right? So, it’s things like that, and very much like your question, that we really, really work to Um, emphasize because being, you’ve got to stay in the world of possibility. Like you said, there were a million reasons you can kill your dream. There are a million reasons you can you can say, this is never gonna work. But if you can find the possibility in it, and you can look at the whole thing as an adventure, go for it. Why not? You know, it, it’s, I mean, the It’s people regret the things they never gave themselves a chance to try, you know, and, and that’s awful to have those regrets, to have those regrets in any time. I don’t care how, I don’t care what age you are. I have regrets. I, you know, if I had tried, who knows what would have come of it. That’s right. That’s right. And I say to people too, so you might try it and hate it. That’s great. Yeah, you’ve mentioned it a couple of times. You talk about metrics. You know, what, what metrics are you gonna use for your to evaluate the, the value to you of your new mindset? How are you gonna check in with yourself to make sure that this is giving you the, the, the joy and the, and the fulfillment that you expected it to, right, so we wanna, you know, there’s some evaluation too. Yes. Oh, definitely. And I think, you know, certainly in working life, we’re measured externally, right? Well that’s ways. Yeah. So, you know, you can’t take those shardsticks forward. I mean, I mean, I think, I mean, you, you can, but you’re not gonna feel very good about the feedback loop, so. What’s better is to start setting some definitions for yourself. Like, what do I want, you know, my physical well-being to look like? What, and how, and, and how can I measure my progress? What do I want my relationship world to look like? How close am I today? Well, what are the indicia that I’m moving in the right direction? We encourage people to set. Those, you know, metrics for themselves and, and source your sense of OKness internally. Source it from yourself, because, you know, we are constantly evaluated, graded, measured, awarded, you know, in external ways throughout our lives. And it’s very easy to get conditioned to needing that, to feel like you’re OK in this world. But the more you can source those things from your own self, your own definitions, and from the most meaningful places, you can identify the happier you will be. And, and that’s particularly true if you’re stepping into a chapter where you are the one creating your life, right? Because who else is gonna stand there and tell you you’re doing it, OK, but you. There’s something very funny, um. You, you, a lot of your clients and a lot of the folks that you cite in the book are, are attorneys, you know, clearly, uh, partners, long, long standing partners at big firms, but you mentioned your own. Yeah. Were you a partner when you left at 35? I was not. I, you know, I was. Well, I was exactly. I was in my 10th year and the the thing was you got to start working, you gotta go 6 months in London, 6 months in New York. I had a 3 year old and 18 month old. I mean, I was like, I appreciate it, but that’s not happening, you know. The reason this is funny is because I, I practiced law for 2 years. Uh, I loved, yeah, I loved law school. I went to Temple Law School. loved law school. I wish law school was 5 years instead of only 3. I loved law school. The practice of law. I made a decision, you know, I was, uh, I, I chose a, a, a, a medium, I guess in New York City would be a medium sized firm, um. And uh it was general liability and medical malpractice, uh, defense, to all defense work. Um, hated it, hated it. The partners, uh, the partners were fighting with each other. Um, at one point there were partners fighting over me. I had, I showed some early talents fighting, and then they, they were all gray-faced. They were all divorced. They’re estranged from their kids. I thought I’m dreading, I don’t. You’re supposed to like I’m working this hard for that. Yeah, for that I’m supposed to aspire to progression, and I’m I’m terrified of it. I don’t want to look like those people. So that firm actually began to implode like partners were leaving and taking hundreds of cases at a time, like major medical center, you know, 200 cases out the door each week or something like that. So I went to a much smaller firm, same kind of practice, hated it. It was cliqueish. If you were in with the, the name partner, you were great, but if you weren’t like me as an outsider, I was new, you were, you were on the outs, and that was only like 12 or 12 or 15 attorneys. I got so disenchanted I quit. I, I, I quit the practice 2 years and I started my first business, which was to prevent people from becoming unhappy, burned out attorneys. I, I called it, I called it attorney career guidance. New York City. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just, I had always had a, a, a, a, a, a, um, a talent for resume writing and cover letter writing and interviews, and I did some of that in college. I worked in the, in the, the college, the office that helps you with get job with the grad studies office or something and all that, yeah right, career guidance. So I parla into a, into a business career guidance. It was unbelievable. I love it and it, it, it did so, so, but I, I kept it for about 44 years and then I. Re-engineered myself again into nonprofit fundraising where I’ve been since since 1998, but, but I was trying to help people not become gray faced this miserable people miserable divorced, estranged from children, uh, attorneys because I knew I wasn’t the only unhappy attorney in New York City. Yes, exactly, exactly. I love that story and Bravo, the reinventions, they’re fantastic. Oh, they were, they were harrowing, but oh, my, my mother, I told my mother she had a knife in her hand when I told her I’m, I’m leaving the law. If it’s at the cutting board, I can picture her in our our home in just the cutting board holding the knife. I was, I had to step away, just, you know, be outside arm’s length just in case, um. So, uh, so I was trying to help attorneys, you know, not be unhappy if they, if they were currently unhappy. I was trying to help them find a better Yeah, a better career, using their skills in a in a in a different way. That’s right. So yeah, let’s go back to your book, um. Um, oh, evolve, no, um, man, time, we’re sovereign over time. Yes, you have control over your time. The, the calendar does not control you. You control it. Talk about our, you, you, it’s, it’s eloquent in the book. I’m sure you can do it here too. Our, we’re so I love the idea of the phrase like the sovereignty, not just, you know, time management, but we’re sovereign over time. Absolutely. Well, I think it’s such, um, again, we get so habituated to others telling us how we have to be with time, right? You know, and most of us, I think, in life, especially these days, we live with a feeling of time scarcity, as if we just haven’t been given enough time to do all the stuff. We somehow think we need to get done, or somebody else is telling us we need to get done. And it, it’s really interesting when you stop for a minute and realize time only exists because you yourself are perceiving it. It’s not a thing that lives outside of you. We, we’re not like beings running around in some giant, you know, time sphere. I mean, we generate time by our lives. And so your own priorities about how you want to engage will then shape time. And but we just get so used to being at the effect of time that we forget we’re in charge of it, and we forget that we can choose. To spend our our energy during the day in an intentional way. And I think that’s especially true for people. Who sell time for a living, right? It starts to feel as if time is actually this externality, and it’s like a jar full of it or something, you know, and it’s like, oh, I ran out of it again. I mean, it’s, it’s not outside of you. And it’s, it’s almost a mindbender to get your head around. But when I started to actually think about what does An energizing day look like. If I could make it up any way I want, what does it look like? And I started mapping this thing for myself and experimenting. But realizing that, you know, until I can imagine an ideal day, I’m never gonna live one. And this is one of the things you ask your clients, describe your ideal day. Walk me through it in great detail, and I don’t want to hear about the day you actually live. I want to hear about the day you would design if you could have it perfect. And that’s, you have to suspend this thinking about, yeah, but I have to do this and I have to do that. I have to do this. Forget all that for now. What would it look like if it was just your perfect creation? That is always such a fun exercise because what you end up realizing, there were rhythms to the day that worked for you. Some people love to get up early. They wanna have quiet time right away. You know, other people love to be active first thing in the morning, or they’re like, Oh, you know, between 8 and noon, that’s my power. Mental hours. Like, I can do 7 hours of work in 3 hours, you know, in those, in that time of day. But when you start to see these, these sections of the day, and when do you want to be social? When do you like to be, you know, sort of thoughtful? When do you just want to be on your own? When do you want to be out of the house? When do you like to be in? I mean, it’s suddenly you realize you’ve got your hands in the clay. And then you realize time is your clay, and you can shape it. You can use it the way you want to use it. But you’re never gonna get there imagining that time is outside of you, and it’s this force that is, that you’re in battle with. You know, you can’t, you can’t be in a battle with time. It, it’s not, that is never going to give you the sense of control and sovereignty over it. That I think you actually have. But this is definitely one of the harder concepts for people to actually implement. And so, we try to give them ways to experiment with these ideas. But if you keep at it, suddenly you realize, wait a minute, I do get to choose. The every single thing is a choice. And, and even for folks who are still working. OK, now, if you’re still working, you’re gonna have constraints on your time. There’s gonna be a weekly meeting, bi-monthly, you know, whatever, there’s gonna be those, but, but without around those exercise your sovereignty, know. Yes. Yes. Here’s an example. We had a very, very, very busy mid-career, um, professional come to work with us. And he came because he said, if I can’t get this solved, I’m leaving my career now. And I should still have 10 good years. than me, but I can’t do this anymore. So we said, OK, let’s, let’s, you know, so among all the other things we did, one of the, one of the things we did was we really worked with him on, talk to me about why, why you’re, what makes a day great or what makes a day not so great. And so he’s talking about how his, his assistant would just throw meetings, these meetings that he just couldn’t stand on his calendar. And they were always the internal ones where everybody’s whining and complaining at him. And he’s like, they just show up all over the place, all over my calendar. And we said, Well, what I understand you have to do those to a certain extent, but what if you constrict them to just Tuesdays? And I, I won’t use our, our, our colorful language, but we called it Tuesday, should they? You know, it’s like Like, you can swear, you can you can swear. Why don’t we make it Tuesday shit day, right? Like, it’s just Tuesday. But then Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday are free of those things. And he was like, Oh my God, that’s, that’s a mindbender. It’s perfect. And that is exactly one of the things he did. And, you know, he ended up making it to the finish line in a much more energized way. Now, that was a tiny piece of the work we did. But it’s a great example of remembering you are sovereign over. You know, what you let into your life and when and how it shows up. And that leads into not managing time but managing your energy, your energy, it’s, there’s so much you could have written a wellness, well, I don’t know, like a, I don’t know, a professional development, I don’t know, professional survival. This is not, this is not by any means restricted to people planning for retirement. Yes. It’s funny, the number of people that we work with who say to us after we’re, you know, through our two-day program, they’ll say, I, I should have done this 15 years ago, in the middle of my career. It would have completely transformed how I approached everything. And I don’t think I’d be so daggone tired, you know, and, I mean, to appreciate you saying that, we get that feedback a lot, that these concepts are really about optimizing the way you’re living with, you know, trying to be more intentional, trying to understand who you are. How you want your life to work, and then figuring out strategies to put that architecture in place. And then realizing that it’s always iterative. You know, this whole thing is a, it’s a mosaic, that you’re constantly shaping. Um, but I just think that sense of agency is so important. And when we, we feel that the effect of our lives, like we have no choice and what is going on every day, it’s just so exhausting. And if you can get your sense of agency back, of course, there will always be constraints, but you can make this beautiful picture out of it, right? That’s still got all the constraints in there, but there’s all sort of, all sorts of juicy stuff that you’ve put in there with intention. That’s a very different proposition. And even more now, so since the pandemic. So, you know, so this revolution just within the past 5 years, if you have the value of hybrid work, you can, if you can, whatever day you can work from home, it could be 5, you know, but whatever it is, even if it’s only 2 or 3. You know, you have greater flexibility there than you do in the office naturally. You still have, you still have agency over your time, even in the office. But, but when you, when you have the value of hybrid work which is new to us, and we have this beauty, this beautiful gift just in, in the past 5 years. Take, take fuller advantage. There is no doubt about it. We, those themes are so strong and I think people got, there’s more opportunity for this kind of thinking and actual implementation than there’s ever been. So it’s only been 5 years. So don’t, you know, don’t be taking it for granted. It’s only been 5 years. It’s a revolution in work, internalize it, you know, to see the, find the value of it for yourself. All right, so talk about managing energy, not time, energy management. Never heard this before. Yes, so I stumbled upon this work, uh, you know, when I was trying to put my sad little life back together. And, um, of course, I was the consummate time manager, of course. So I, I was, I was like, to your point you had to what? I don’t know. Were you 6 minute increments? Yes, that’s incredible we should, we should acquaint or just a little digression, just acquaint people with billing at a firm. I, I’m accustomed to the same thing. Yeah, what, what this looks like. Yes, so you literally have to record and explain and justify what you are achieving. For whomever and literally in 6 minute increments every 10th of an hour an hour and, and it has to be specific and valuable and, you know, expressed well. I mean, it’s just nuts, right? You, you, I, I said I used to joke to people, I feel like I’m selling my life away one hour at a time. Like, what, what am I doing? And I mean, I don’t mean to knock, you know, people who love being lawyers, but it’s, it’s, it can create some very weird. Dynamics with time and you, you just feel almost like you are selling your life away, you know, it’s the strangest thing, but anyway, can I, can I just give you my, can I give you my, my, my own personal, um, uh, I, I, I never, there was never a billing code for thinking. Thinking there was a bill. Everything was enacted a researching, writing, drafting, arguing, attending, you know, answering, whatever draft, but there was never a billing code for just thinking and I thought so much of what a lawyer does is just thinking. But there was never, you couldn’t, you couldn’t build 6 minutes for thinking, let alone, you know, an hour or you know, so and I used to look at, you know, so I practiced from 1990, 1980. 1989. I graduated law school, no, no, I started 18992. I, I, I practiced law for two years, 192 to 194. We didn’t have computer billing. Right. Every day looking at that blank page, staring the, the ledger, the one that you had to fill up with like 12 or 13 or 14 hours, and whatever you didn’t do was gonna spill over the next day or weekends. And that’s how you end up now I never, I did not have this was smaller fronts, we did not have 80 hour, you know, requirements or even unspoken requirements like I, I know you did, but 60 hours, you know, 60, 70 hours, you’re supposed to bill a lot and you didn’t do enough any day, it was gonna spill over. And every day, like turning the page or the blankle from the full page the day before turning it over to the blank page on the other side, oh my God, I have to start with the 6/10 of the 10th of an hour now again, and I can’t finish until I’ve got whatever uh 1000s done. Oh my God, you know, it was, it was just so dispiriting every single day, every day. The blank page, the physical blank page. OK, I’m sorry, opposite of energizing every day you’d look, I, I would fear going to the blank page of like on the bus ride into the city. Oh my God, the blank page is staring at me. All right, any case, all right, so that’s what you had to account for, you know, at 80 hours a week and in increments of 6 minutes. So, so. Yeah. It’s OK, that’s a lot on time management. You had to be a a consummate time manager, but, but the, the higher plane, the enlightenment, the enlightenment of energy management. Yes. So, as I was trying to come up with a completely different theory of how to live a life that I was proud of. I, you know, I, I read this piece of research, um, that these two gentlemen had done on high performing people, meaning people who could show up consistently the way they wanted to show up under often very intense conditions. And they worked with, you know, some of the best tennis players in the world, for example. I mean, they’re out there by themselves and, you know, under great pressure, and they’ve got to perform. So, what is it these people have figured out? You know, they were very into Interested in understanding what it was that high performing people had tapped into and what their research uncovered, and they published it in a book called The Powerful Engagement. But what they uncovered was that the currency of high performance is energy, not time. And the problem with time is we all get the same amount of it, right? You don’t magically get more. I mean, it is what it is. Energy, on the other hand, is something you can build more capacity in. And I just was, my mind was blown. I thought, of course, that makes complete sense. You know, and they pointed out, well, we understand what physical energy is, right? It’s how much get up and go do you feel. But you also have emotional energy. You know, you can have a lot of negatively charged emotion, or you can have a lot of positively charged emotion. You know, your mental energy, like how much, how steadily and for how long can you focus on something, but even your spiritual energy, which is not necessarily religion, but that your inner life, you know, your sense of purpose, and so. What they sort of explained in this book was, we can all build capacity, and you do it this, just like you build a muscle. You stress it and you must let it recover. So you oscillate between states of exertion and states of recovery. And if you do that consistently and intentionally, you will find that you build more and more and more energetic capacity. And if you do that across all those realms as a human being, you’ll, you’ll sort of be this unstoppable force of a person. I was fascinated by this idea, but what it lit in me was a curiosity. And I thought, let me try living this way. Why not? What do I have to lose? I mean, you know, selling the six-minute increments didn’t do it for me. So it, it’s, it was fabulous. And I still read that book. I’ve probably read that book 10 times. It is such an interesting blueprint for living. And of course, there’s so much more, you know, I can’t possibly touch on in this chat, but I would really encourage people who find it intriguing to invest whatever it would be a few hours to read through this book, because it is fascinating, and I, I talk about the application of some of those ideas in our work. In, in helping people think about this life restructuring, right? Because how do you approach life now? I mean, if I’m setting down that other model, what’s gonna replace it? So this is often a very intriguing way to start thinking differently about how you make the most of a day, a week, even a year. And what am I working on? Am I doing things that build my energy? Do I feel more energized or drained by that thing I just did? Do, am I doing enough recovering? I mean, most, most people working through middle life are not recovering enough, you know, they’re just, I didn’t. I was like mock 10 all the time. So it was, it was a really, it was a game changer for me. And um the name of the book again? What is it? Yes, it’s called The Power of Full Engagement. Jim Lore and Tony Schwartz were the authors, and it was written in the 90s, but it’s still, it’s still available everywhere you can buy a book. Is that the same same Tony Schwartz who wrote uh The Art of the Deal? I don’t think so. No, I don’t think so. And I know Jim Loh has gone on to write some more like the the principles of conscious leadership, I think is his recent book. Anyway, he’s a really interesting thinker and has a lot of great stuff to say. Let’s close with relationships. I’m, I’m a, I’m a huge believer in relationships. I’m the guy who gets our high school friends together, my law school, our, our Air Force reunions, the college fraternity reunions. I love, I, people thank me for doing it and I say, no, I’m, I’m not doing it for, I’m, I’m selfish because it’s a joy to me. I, I’m getting us friends together for selfish reasons because it’s a joy for me to be around all of you and to see everybody else together and, and when it’s those deep deep friendships that go back so many years, there’s, you know, there’s no personas, there’s no facade. We all knew each other when we were college assholes, so. We’re not pretending. We’re not, there’s no family persona. There’s no work persona. There’s no relationship persona. It’s just you. It’s just you. So put your feet up the way you used to, and you know, so, uh, so we gotta close. uh, there’s so much more in the book. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll say a little more when we close, but we gotta close with. The value, the joy of personal relationships. Absolutely. We, we emphasize this so strongly because You know, I think any, any of us, no matter what stage of life we’re in. We struggle to make time for all of the people in our people world, right, that we’d love to stay connected to. It, it’s hard. I mean, there, you know, when you’ve got so many demands on time and so much to get done and all those things, it’s easy to like, think of your relationships as the things that are expendable. But what we remind people is that they are really the richest part of your life and always will be. And if you can Think intentionally about who you want to be alive in your world with you, what kinds of relationships you want, what, what are the characteristics of those relationships when they’re really working? You will never ever regret investing in your relationships. Never. You know, when you look back on life, it’s always the people. It’s always the people. And so, especially for people, you know, shifting out of one chapter and into another, there’s often A loss of some, some part of your community, you know, whether they were colleagues or the neighborhood of people you lived near, or your kids are grown up now, and all those parents you raised them with or you going other places. So, continuing to stay connected to the relationships that Always mattered to you, is so important. And I think a lot of people coming through middle adulthood and moving into this chapter, maybe where they’re finally, their kids are grown and career is kind of starting to mellow out a little bit. They’re like, Oh, I finally have time for my friends again. But I feel a little sheepish, cause I’ve been AWOL, you know? And we remind them, everyone’s been AWOL. I mean, you know, you’ve got to be proactive because if your old friend reached out to you after 20 years and said, Hey, I know it’s been forever, but I’m in town. Do you wanna grab lunch? What would you say? You’d say, heck, yes, I’m in. So they, it’s like, Oh, you’re right. So we, we literally have a model for people, you know, an approach to use to Really get that engine going again. And I tell you over and over and over when we’ve been working with people for a number of months after the original session with them, they talk about this and how thrilling it is to be reconnected to people, um, and to be deepening their family relationships. Oh my gosh, it’s, it, it, it, there’s, as you know, there is a limitless amount of joy there. All right, Elizabeth, there’s so much more in the book. You got all of part 4, which we didn’t get to, you know, you, you got a 6 month checklist, you know, so, so for anybody who is retirement planning, uh, there’s, there’s great value throughout the book, but as we’ve made plain, it’s not only for people planning retirement. I, I think it’s just, it’s just, it’s, it’s mindfulness and intentionality. In, in mostly career, but there there are a lot of life, you know, non-career aspects to what you talk about too. Uh, so congratulations on the book. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate this conversation. I’m glad. Thank you. Uh, your book is Encore. Well, you know the title. I’m I’m saying this for listeners. Uh, you know the title of your book. Encore, High Achiever’s Guide to Thriving in retirement. But the value goes way beyond uh retirement planning. Elizabeth Zlika Parsons, you’ll find her on LinkedIn, uh, again, I, I hope you’ll connect, you know, you don’t have to, but it would be nice, I think, and, uh, you’ll find her practice at encorrico.com. Thanks so much, Elizabeth. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much. Next week, donor advised fund, fundraising. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.