The Retirement Lie

Eighteen months into my "retirement," and I've reached a conclusion: I'm not very good at it. I've barely seen a beach, and my golf game remains mediocre at best. I've pretty much stopped playing pickleball, and I haven't started watching Matlock reruns or cable news.?I own no linen clothes.

On the plus side, I have a 530-day Duolingo streak and I usually finish Wordle and Connections by 8 a.m. Truth be told, I'm enjoying the unstructured time, but I recognize there's risk in enjoying it too much.

I don't think I'm alone. And I don't think I'm the problem. In fact, I've reached a second conclusion with an assist from social commentator Buddy the Elf: This whole retirement concept is a lie that sits on a throne of lies.

We’re taught either explicitly or implicitly that life moves in three acts.

• Act One: Socialization (Childhood and Education) We go through the trials and tribulations under controlled settings that prepare us for life as productive members of society. These are the years where we learn reading and writing and arithmetic, and the years where we form our character.

• Act Two: Execution (Family and Working Years) We capitalize on what we've learned, earning a living and making a life. For most, this will involve raising a family. In Act Two, we'll settle into a career, perhaps taking on more management and leadership responsibility. These leadership responsibilities extend into civic and religious institutions.

• Act Three: Reward (Retirement and the Golden Years) We get to enjoy the spoils of all our hard work. It's time to pass the torch to the next generation. We become more responsible for general wisdom than day-to-day leadership.

Said another way, we’re taught that the end we should have in mind is capital R Retirement. It all sits on a throne of lies, but that's the lie.

It's a lie we tell ourselves (I can't wait to do nothing…), and it's a lie propagated by a culture fully bought into the hedonic treadmill (You'll be happy when…). It's a lie that generates massive profits for the financial services industry (Do you know your number?), shapes our healthcare system (Do I have some pills for you!), and starves our kids of opportunity (Let's saddle the next generation with stupid amounts of debt.).

Truth be told, civilizations depend on lies. We all buy into a set of stories-- complicit agreements about currency and borders and rules of law. Outside of a few laws of physics, we're making it all up as we go along and hoping that people buy into the narrative in perpetuity.

It all works pretty well… until it doesn't.

The retirement narrative worked for a while, but it's no longer fit for purpose. It threatens the viability of our economic model and our social structure. Oh, and it shortens our life. I know I sound hyperbolic, but our current approach to retirement and the underlying Three-Act play are killing us. They're killing our society, and they're killing us as individuals. Crushing our souls. Trapping us in these liminal spaces.

Other than that, eighteen months in and things are going great. So go meet with your advisor, figure out your number, set your countdown clock, and check Zillow for that sprawling Florida rancher with a lanai, low HOA fees, and an extra bedroom for the future grandkids.

The Four Phases of Retirement

I have neighbors who have dedicated their life to government service; they've sacrificed annual income for the mission and for a pension that kicks in after so many years. Not surprisingly, many of them have countdown clocks on their phones.

"How much longer?" someone will ask.

"Seven years, four months, eleven days…” a glance at the phone, “… and 37 seconds. But who's counting."

They're not alone. People spend the majority of their life waiting to retire. It's as much the American dream as owning a home, moving up the ladder, and providing a better life for our kids. This retirement dream gets planted early and reinforced your first day of your first "real job," when the HR team explains the 401k or 403b benefits and the magic of tax-deferred compounding. The Financial Industry tells you that you need to know "your number." Sign up for a wealth advisor so you can buy that beach house, join that golf course, live the life you've always deserved.

Dr. Riley Moynes interviewed hundreds of retirees and noticed a familiar pattern. Phase one of retirement felt like vacation. "The best part is that there is no set routine." Moynes observes that this often lasts about a year, and then it begins to lose its luster. When it does, you've moved into Phase Two.

In Phase Two, "we feel loss, and we feel lost," says Moynes. We lose our identity, many of our relationships and our sense of purpose. The world feels out of our control, and we have no power any more to do anything about it. If the lack of structure made the vacation phase appealing, it's what fuels our sense of drift in this second phase.

During Phase Three, we regain our agency, and we commit to sampling. We've come face-to-face with the reality that we're adrift and this could last the better part of thirty years. We have to shake loose of depression and do something. According to Moynes, "It's really important to keep trying?and experimenting with different activities?that’ll make you want to get up in the morning again?because if you don’t,?there’s a real good chance of slipping back into phase two,?feeling like you’ve been hit by a bus."

Phase Four is all about purpose. It's about finding something that brings joy and gives meaning to life. When you get to Phase Four, Moynes suggests that you ask yourself, "How can I squeeze all the juice out of retirement?” We only get one crack at this life. Shouldn’t we all be aiming to “squeeze all its juice out?”

I love how Moynes lays this out. It's a process, and it's a predictable one at that. Here's the sad reality. A lot of people never get to Phase Three much less Phase Four. They struggle with questions of identity and purpose. They get stuck between their working life and these golden years, never figuring out where or when to squeeze juice. The long-promised dream becomes this extended liminal phase.

My friends who have struggled in retirement have struggled mostly with identity. We all have egos, and research suggests (and my personal experience corroborates) that it takes about six months to go from Who's Who to Who's That when you leave a familiar workplace.

It's a big identity adjustment, and I was going to learn from their struggles. At least that's what I intended to do.

"So, What Do You Do?"

In March of 2023, I took my 18-year-old son to an Admitted Students' experience at his top college choice. It stretched out over two days, and for the evening session they separated high school seniors from their parents, recognizing that each might appreciate a more tailored message and, no doubt wanting the high school seniors to interact with one another. I'm sure they'd determined that kids who connect with other kids will be more likely matriculate. I later learned that the kids spent their time making snarky comments about the cocaine-crazed mascot who sprinted back and forth, imploring a bunch of too-cool high-school seniors to sing the fight song. Be that as it may, the process worked; my son told me to send in the deposit.

The parents, meanwhile, attended a panel discussion where university representatives told us how special our kids were and that we needed to let them fail. They kept it upbeat, but the subtext was clear: "If your prince or princess goes here, please don't call us every time they bomb a test or get in a fight with their roommate. We can't take it anymore." Big smiles. “But we love them, and they should come here.”

This was followed by one of those awkward mixers with grapes and cheese cubes and boxed wine where parents smiled at one another, huddled around high-top tables with tight white tablecloths. The extroverts made effortless small talk-- where you from? you here with a son or daughter? what do you think? did you go here? what does your child want to study?-- while the introverts appreciated that someone had taken the lead in deflating the awkwardness.

I waited for what would come-- the question that had haunted me since the email had gone out announcing my "stepping down" six months earlier, the question that we've all answered a thousand times in a sadly reductive way that says a little too much about what we value.

A father looked at my name tag and offered up a smile. "So, you're from Maryland. What do you do?"

This question allows us to size one another up. Tag someone based on a profession or how they tell the story. "Oh, you're a…" We've all mastered our answers, expressing our joy or our frustration, our humility or our gratitude with a few simple phrases. "I'm a public school teacher. History. I love teaching ninth graders." Or "Been at a three-letter agency you've probably heard of since right after college. And in 789 days, I'll be retired."

My answer? I took a sip of my Sauvignon Blanc, drew in a breath, and said, "Uh. Well. That's a bit of a complicated question." At 53 years old, I no longer had an answer. "Right now, I'm, I guess… I kind of retired at the end of last year, but I'm not really retired. I mean, I just wanted… I don't know… I guess I'm on a break and I'm figuring out what's next. I mean, maybe it's a sabbatical."

I imagined them wondering if I'd been fired. Or if I'd had some sort of breakdown. Or were they judging me as someone who'd stepped over a bunch of people so I could go sit on a beach? I had been in the hustle game so long, I worried that they'd wonder, "What the hell does that guy do all day?"

The gentleman who had asked smiled politely and then turned to the woman to my left. "And how about you?" I'm sure he went back to his room at the Embassy Suites and didn't give me or my stammering answer another thought, much more interested in whether his daughter would tell him to send the deposit.

But the question haunted me. What was I doing? What had I done? Why couldn't I answer a simple question? Was this what an identity crisis felt like?

Truth be told, I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. I felt no reservations and no regret. I was sleeping better, feeling lighter, and smiling more. It was early days, but things were going great. "Extended vacation" in Moynes' framework. I missed the people and the amount of time I spent with them, but I didn't miss most of the job. Now, if I could just package that into a story that made sense.

In the months before and the months after, the answer to the question kept changing. Sometimes I'd say I was retired. Sometimes I would say I was on a sabbatical. I'd suggest I was figuring out what I wanted to do when I grew up. I'd say I was doing a lot of writing and a little teaching. That I was spending more time with family. That Jen and I were excited to travel more. I'd tell people I was taking a breath after running hard for years.

The next logical questions would come. "So, what do you want to do? Are you going to teach? I could totally see that." "Would you want to go back and work for a company? Let me know when you're going to start something." "What are you writing? I hear you're going to publish a book."

All of this made me uncomfortable. I was doing some teaching, but I wasn't sure that would be it. Or that I was even qualified to do more than the occasional guest lecture. And I was trying my hand at some writing. I'd had a few different novels in draft form that needed a lot of attention, and I had ideas for some non-fiction projects. I'd often posted my thoughts on LinkedIn, and I'd probably get going with that again. But I didn't want to get pinned down, didn't want to create some expectation that I'd be doing some world-beating only to face the tough questions in subsequent years. "Whatever happened to that book?" "I thought you said you were going to teach?" "Do you find that the longer you're out of the game the harder it is to return?"

The world tells us to be bold. Put it out there. You're more committed to something when you've made a public pronouncement. But this felt different. When the company founder announced that I would be "stepping out of my role," I asked to take out the word "retirement" out of the email. I even hedged on leaving. I would stay on as an advisor.

After that email, the questions had started in earnest, and that's when I felt the discomfort of not knowing. I'd say how grateful I was to have a little time to figure things out, and I'd throw out some possibilities. But the telephone game would work its magic, and I'd hear some of the amazing things I was going to do, which all felt like an ill-fitting pair of shoes.

It took me most of a year to realize the challenge of living in this liminal space wasn't mine alone. And it wasn't just people making mid-career transitions. It was a problem that most of the population would face, probably sooner than later. And it was a problem due in large part to the many stories we'd bought hook, line, and sinker that now felt like the wrong stories. They felt like, well, lies.

The Power of Stories

Long before anthropologist Arnold van Gannep named the phenomenon, the Roman Catholic Church understood a little bit about liminality. The church exposed its congregants to purgatory, a potentially infinite liminal space, and then exploited their resulting fears. Talk about your high-margin businesses.

In the 16th century, the clergy sold plenary indulgences to anyone wanting to wipe out their sins or the sins of their loved ones. These indulgences would limit the time someone would have to spend in purgatory. Even if you were suspect of the Church's underlying motives, did you really want to take a chance with your after-life? Kind of a Pascal's-wager turned into a commercial enterprise.

A somewhat obscure professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg wasn't buying what the Church was selling. Literally or figuratively. Martin Luther believed that repentance went deeper than some sacramental ritual and acquisition of a certificate. True repentance, for Luther, involved sorrow for sin, inner spiritual repentance, and acts of reconciliation. In other words, he believed in a different set of rituals to cross the threshold known as the pearly gates.

Legend has it that he wrote up his complaints in the form of Ninety-Five Theses and pinned them on the door of All Saints Church. With Gutenberg's printing press available, Luther's concerns went early-Renaissance viral. Thus began the Protestant Reformation, a rewriting of the complicit agreements about what it means to be a Christian for many in 16th century Europe.

Even if we're making it all up as we go along, the agreements we buy into work until someone like Martin Luther comes along and undercuts the story. Or a group of colonists decide they no longer want to pledge loyalty to a British King, and they certainly don't want to send tax money his way. Or a disenfranchised and oppressed group garners enough support to force the repeal of segregation laws or pass an amendment establishing their right to vote. Once a critical mass stops believing, once enough people decide these complicit agreements are really a bunch of self-serving lies, we have the seeds of revolution. The society either re-writes its stories or new leadership assumes the reins. Either way, there's a new set of complicit agreements that re-set the rules.

Relative to the fundamentals of American life, we've reached such a juncture. The stories our parents told us about school and work and retirement are no longer fit for purpose. In fact, they threaten the viability of the very economic model and social structure that they helped build. They’ve thrust us into this race with the wrong finish line. We're left wondering if it's even the right race.

We've reached this point gradually and then suddenly. Technology, like the internet and artificial intelligence, has been an accelerant. Artificial Intelligence might just be the straw on the camel's back, but we've been hurtling toward this day for decades, increasingly uncomfortable living in a reality that doesn't match mythology. We're left in this liminal space, knowing the world's changed, but not sure what's next.

But how did we all come to buy into this tale about Golden Years, a life of leisure, and joking about Florida being heaven's waiting room? How did this become our “finish line?”

What's Your Number?

Our ancestors didn't have the luxury to structure their lives in three-acts that culminated in something called "retirement." Farmers and artisans didn't retire. Maybe they shifted the workload to their kids, but the job didn't go away. And those employed on a farm or in a tavern or as a teacher didn't have a pension or a retirement plan. For the most part, it didn't matter. Into the 1800s, people on average lived 30-something years. That number is skewed by infant mortality, but even if you survived those early days, you were lucky to see 60. And when you died, you usually died pretty quickly of some acute condition-- an infection, a communicable disease, a war injury.

Hard to dream of sipping Mai Tais and playing shuffleboard in your golden years when there are no golden years.

Along comes German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who understood demographic trends, felt deep empathy for vulnerable populations, and, out of concern for all citizens installed a social safety net.

Well, not exactly.

In actuality, Marx and Engels published the Communist Manifesto in 1848, which inspired uprisings across Europe. Von Bismarck aggressively passed anti-socialist laws, but in the back half of the century during a down part of the economic cycle, he feared for his political life, and he did what savvy politicians do. He stroked checks to undermine his socialist opponents, giving birth to the modern welfare state.

Von Bismarck proposed that workers receive a government-funded pension at age 70. This was enacted in 1889 and was in place until World War 1, when Germany dropped the age to 65. Medicine hadn't made too much progress in extending lifespans, so this still only applied to a small percentage of the German people. It may have been largely symbolic, but it was an important step nonetheless and helped quell potential uprisings.

Other nations took note, mostly across Europe. The United States, with its history of rugged individualism, lagged for decades, but that changed in the 1930s. During The Great Depression, US GDP dropped 28% in three-years and one out of four men found himself out of work. Communism was on the rise across the globe, and the labor movement was gaining steam.

Roosevelt pitched aspects of the modern welfare state as a "middle way" between the extremes of communism and the laissez-fare capitalism that was now seen to have gotten the country into this mess. In 1935, as part of Roosevelt's New Deal, the US adopted the 65-year standard for retirement and social security, which was still above the average life expectancy. Roosevelt needed votes, but he also wanted to move older workers out of the labor force to make way for new entrants, and he wanted to do it in a humane way.

During the twentieth century, life expectancy rose from 48 to 79 years of age. By the end of the century, 65-year-olds could expect to live another 17 years. Impressive, but you should never navigate a river by an average. Many would live into their 90s, and centenarians have more than tripled in the last twenty years.

Enter the Three Act structure and our particular fascination with Act Three. From the day we start work, we start dreaming of its end. Which is really a new beginning. The beginning of our Golden Years.

These Golden Years depend on citizens buying into a set of stories, which can be distilled into four main tenets:

• Tenet #1: Your Golden Years are the reward for a lifetime of hard work. You've paid into a system for your entire working life. You now get access to the benefits, just like your parents did. This is your money, and you're entitled to it.

• Tenet #2: You have made tremendous sacrifices to get to this point. Society stands on your shoulders. Our seniors fought for freedom, built a thriving economy, invested in our communities, and served in every meaningful capacity. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

• Tenet #3: Change is happening fast. It's the next generation's turn to lead us into the future. You're not built for all these new technologies and new ideas. These kids speak a different language. The game has passed you by, and that’s okay.

• Tenet #4: Legacy matters. As seniors, our kids' and grandkids' future matters more than our happiness. It's time to turn over the reins. All you've done, you've done for them.

These tenets worked. They worked for a different time, when change moved a little slower, when the world was less interconnected, when our political parties wanted to govern, and when most people didn't outlive their working life. It worked when most people bought into these ideas.

Mid-Life Rumspringa

Many of my friends who've retired early have struggled at first. They’ve confessed to feeling lost. Not sure what to do. They would talk about vacations and celebrate their freedom-- what Moynes defines as Phase One-- but when pressed they admitted frustration, which almost bordered on depression. Maybe they just needed something to do, but it felt deeper than that.

I was determined that wasn't going to be me. To avoid that fate, I had to diagnose why they felt the way they felt. It seemed straightforward. They were going through an identity crisis. These weren't necessarily high-ego people, but they had held big jobs, and had poured themselves into those jobs. They were identified as the President of… The founder of… The CXO of… Most of their friends were still at the company they'd just left. Even outside of work, they ran with a crowd who looked at them as winners. The Chief Something of Something…

Like me, they had been ready to leave. Even excited about taking a breath after running hard for so many years. But it felt like they had just stepped off a cliff. So much of their life, so much of their identity, had been wrapped up in their work. Brad Stulberg , in Master of Change, calls out this trap. "Overidentifying with one thing that you have really sets you up for fragility."

When I had been asked to take on the role of Allegis Group president, I remember telling our kids at dinner about my new assignment. They had friends whose parents worked in the company and might hear the news from one of them. I assured them not much would change, but that this was a higher-profile job. One of my daughters, then 16, wrinkled her nose, shook her head, and said, "Why you?"

I had the same question. "Why me?"

I told that story a lot, maybe as much to remind myself that I wasn't all that special as to let people know I wanted to hear from them, to deflate the psychological size that comes with title. I liked to think I didn't have much of an ego. Deep down, though, we all view the world through our own subjective lens. We all cast ourselves as hero of our story.

Still, I took Stulberg's advice to heart. I had a lot of friends outside of Allegis Group , and I worked hard to not overly identify with the company or my role. When I introduced myself at a Town Hall, I'd often start by saying, "Let's hit the important stuff. I've been a husband for 24 years, and I'm a father to twin girls and a son. In fact, to most of the world, I'm known as Jen Hilger's husband." I talked to a next-door neighbor of 15 years at an Oktoberfest party, and he asked me what I did for work. That felt like a victory.

Even so, after I left I struggled with identity questions. I had that admitted-students' day moment several more times. I wasn't retired, and I wasn't just taking a break. I was teaching and writing and consulting. I mean, kind of. I had a lot of calls and kept in touch with a lot of people. Almost all of this was pro-bono, so it seemed disingenuous to imply that I was a writer or a teacher or a consultant. Has "what we do" become inextricably linked to our income stream? Isn't there supposed to be a difference between vocation and avocation?

For most of that first year, I described my life as "on sabbatical," but then that didn't even feel right. Sabbaticals are round-trip tickets. I spoke at a conference and attended another. I taught a business class to graduate students in engineering and I posted every Tuesday on LinkedIn. I didn't know it, but I was in Phase Three of Moynes' model, sampling lots of things. I started calling it Mid-life Rumspringa, a nod to the Amish tradition of adolescents experimenting with life outside of their childhood community to determine if they wanted to commit to Amish life.

At the Global Peter Drucker Forum, I had a chance to listen to Herminia Ibarra talk about mid-life transitions. She explained that we make meaning of our life through the story we tell ourselves and others-- the answer to the so-what-do-you-do question. My identity crisis boiled down to one thing: I didn't know the ending to the story. If you don't know the ending, you don't know what details matter. You can't explain how you arrived at this point and give your life coherence. You don't know how to tell your story. Any of it.

I suspected that my friends who left were dealing with the same challenge. It wasn't really about identifying with a past role as much as it was not having a full story to tell that would shape their identity. Once I understood this process, I felt better. I still didn't have an ending, but I realized that I was on this journey, and I was exactly where I needed to be. There was joy in figuring out the ending. Or at least the next ending.

Without an understanding of the identity crisis, we can get stuck in Phase Two. For too many, a long-awaited retirement can leave people disoriented and unmoored, their identity having melted away with no clear sign of when or how to rebuild it. Conversely, once you know, you know. It's a journey. The road to progress goes through the liminal. We’re all on a quest to identify The Main Thing.

A New Set of Tenets

As Ibarra suggested, we derive the meaning in our life from the stories we tell ourselves and others. We attach to our company or our church or our country because we connect our story to its story. It becomes a part of our identity.

In our post-work existence, it can be hard to figure out to what we can affix our story. The best companies stand for something. They define their purpose, and, more important, they live that purpose. They embrace a set of values that come through in the actions of the people. When we find meaning at work, it's often because we buy into the company's purpose and feel like our work matters. Everyone wants to be part of something bigger than themselves. I saw a big part of my leadership role as preserving the soul of the company. I wanted to know that someone joining in 2022 or 2032 would have the same magical experience I'd had, where people had believed in me more than I had believed in myself.

That doesn't always happen for people. Sometimes a job is just trading time for money. Regardless, as Brad Stulberg suggests, our identity should be like a house with several rooms. We can derive meaning through work, but we can also derive meaning through family, friends, coaching, volunteering and any other number of community activities. For many, work is a means to an end-- a way to pay the bills to support this other stuff that feeds the soul.

In retirement years, kids are often out of the house or at least at a different stage in life. The next generation of parents has stepped into the roles of scout leaders and softball coaches. In other community activities, the next generation has stepped up to leadership roles in churches and non-profits. We can find ways to stay busy-- building model trains, reading books, engaging on a non-profit board-- but too often we can feel like butterflies, fluttering from one thing to the next.

On the island of Okinawa, there is no word for retirement. They don't think about this bright line between working and not-working. They haven't bought into the lie that you'll be happy when you can enjoy the spoils of all your hard work. They don't dream of moving to Florida, playing shuffleboard, and beating the traffic to dinner. Instead, they talk about Ikigai, a Japanese word loosely translated into, "the reason I get out of bed in the morning." They don't flutter around from activity to activity. They have a garden that they tend or an office that they go to. A reason to wake up every day. Okinawans live in Phase Four.

They also have the highest concentration of centenarians on the planet. We'd be well served to learn from the Okinawans. No more retirement. Just constant renewal. A focus on Ikigai.

Easier said than done. As I mentioned above, I've been enjoying my time sampling different things. I wake up most days with a sense of purpose, but it's not as clear as Ikigai. It's not as constant. Too much fluttering from thing to thing. I still don't have an ending to my story that would help me tell the beginning and the middle.

But here's what I know. In some way, that ending has to involve community and connection. A typical work week for me included three or four lunch meetings, a breakfast, a happy hour or two, and a dinner. While that might have been "work," it also was social sustenance. I developed deep, long-lasting friendships. Relationships that went well beyond a set of transactions to deliver on some business objective.

Without the rhythm of the work-week and the shared cause, it would be easy for those friendships to atrophy. I've had to be intentional and diligent about investing time in people. I'm grateful for the many who have been receptive or have taken initiative to maintain our relationship. Truth be told, most of them are still in the fight that I left, and that fight consumes a lot of time and energy.

We have a lot of work to do to re-write our underlying societal narratives. The Three-Act Structure of Life no longer fits our reality. Education isn't a phase of life that prepares us for a steady career. It has to be a huge part of our entire life. We have too many of what Bruce Feiler calls Lifequakes. The days of a forty-year career are over. Creative destruction ensures almost anything we've mastered will be rendered irrelevant, leaving us on a steady (we hope) string of assignments, spending time in transition, working through liminal spaces. And while it might take some time for society to write a new set of stories that gains broad acceptance, you don't have to wait.

You can stop buying the old stories as soon as today. You can have a different end in mind.

1. Stop thinking of retirement as your final act. You have another turn in you. You have so much to discover. So much to do. In fact, never retire. Just be on a quest for renewal. Curiosity is a wonderful motivator.
2. Find the joy in writing new narratives and the joy in discovering new endings. I've come to love trusting the process and realizing that I'm not sure where things might end up. That's more than okay. Who wants to watch a movie with a predictable, formulaic ending? Know that, regardless of the current narrative you're living, there will be a sequel. We should live like there's always going to be a sequel.
3. Stop believing that you are what you do. Instead, establish several rooms in your identity house and invest time and energy in a range of interests and roles. We make sense of ourselves and the world not through what we do, but through the stories we tell ourselves.
4. Don't save for retirement; there is no retirement. Don't think there's magic in stepping off the treadmill; know that the hedonic treadmill is a trap. Instead, save for the freedom to do whatever you want. Money should not be a way of keeping score or deferring joy, but a means to fully experience living. And if you love what you do, keep doing it.
5. And as part of that living, be a good ancestor. Figure out how to invest your time, treasure, and talent to help the next generation flourish. We didn't inherit this planet from our parents; we're borrowing it from our children.
6. Accept that the world owes you nothing. Develop a gratitude practice and realize that you're a heck of a lot happier when you look for the good in people and realize how fortunate you are.
7. And above all else, nurture friendships. When we have no sequel left to write, we'll think back on our adventures and value the human connections we've made. Every happiness study, every anecdotal interview of hospice patients, underlines this point. Fulfillment does not come from getting more or achieving more or working more or winning more. It comes from loving more.

May you always have the curiosity to do and be more, the courage to sample new ideas, and the connections to give your life sustenance and meaning.