Retirement Can Involve More Transitions Than We Expect

When Next Avenue started publishing in 2012, the grassroots movement reimagining the possibilities and opportunities available during the traditional retirement years was gaining momentum. The trend has only strengthened in the intervening years.

"Two-thirds of older Americans now view retirement not as a time of pure rest and relaxation but as a new chapter in life, with plenty of room for new ambitions," Ken Dychtwald, Robert Morison and Katy Terveer write in "Redesigning Retirement" in the Harvard Business Review.

Workers late in their primary careers increasingly plan on earning an income in retirement, perhaps by working part-time, finding an encore career, starting a business or signing up for gig jobs. The labor force participation rate for workers aged 55 and older hints at the scale of change. The rate is currently 38.4% and, while that's below the recent peak of 40.3% in February 2020, it's considerably higher than the low of 29.3% in April 1993.

We don't have a good label for the trend. Popular terms include second act, unretirement, next chapter, encore career and refirement, but none has entered the mainstream conversation. Whatever term you prefer, working retirees often find purpose by continuing to tap into the skills and knowledge gained during long careers. They also find that earning even small sums helps support lifestyles and bolster retirement savings.

That said, people who have embraced unretirement learn (or maybe relearn) that major life transitions are rarely easy and smooth. Transitions almost always seem to take longer than expected or hoped for. Transitions are deeply unsettling.

"There is a disequilibrium that people feel when they are in transition," says Anne Button, executive director of the University of Colorado Denver Change Makers program. "Transitions can be disorienting."

The typical transformation takes time, introspection, networking, a willingness to experiment and reservoirs of resilience. Change Makers is designed to help experienced professionals find their next chapter. Button offers several suggestions drawn from her experience working with those seeking a meaningful and engaging vocation later in life.

Top of the list is to surround yourself with others going through a similar journey. Finding a community may involve returning to school (a growing number of colleges and universities offer career transition programs), attending classes on the topic offered in your area, joining a networking group of peers and similar groups.

"Talking with other people in transition and talking about your transition and hearing their transitions is really helpful," says Button. "What is exciting is to watch them feed off each other. You aren't alone."

She adds that part of the transition process is recognizing that you are a beginner again. Many people she works with have developed expertise in their careers. They're experts in their chosen field. That's no longer the case now that they're seeking a new job, a different career, an enterprise different from what they did before."

However, it's also exciting to learn new things. Button adds that people should be willing to take chances and not be afraid of making mistakes. "Some things will work out. Some won't," says Button. "Open your mind and dream."

Her insights echo the experience of Vanessa Tennyson, age 65. Tennyson has developed a deep understanding of transitions. For one thing, she is in her encore career and her focus is working with people looking for their next chapter in life.

Tennyson spent much of her work life at an old-line design and consulting engineering firm in Minneapolis. She held a variety of positions there and eventually became a co-owner. She sold her shares in the business five years ago and, like so many people these days, wondered what came next.

"I really didn't want to stop working, but I'd done enough in my capital raising career, as it were," Tennyson says. "It's like, OK, here are all these paths. Start exploring."

To help her with her exploration, she became a fellow at the University of Minnesota's Advanced Careers Initiative. The program helped people in the second half of life choose their next chapter. (The program closed for a redesign and will reopen with one class in May.)

One day, several fellows suggested Tennyson become an executive and leadership coach. The career wasn't on her radar screen, but she liked the idea. She got her professional certificate from Columbia University and opened for business in 2020 with zero income. Five years later her firm is thriving and she has an office in a restored historic building in Minneapolis.

"I've never been busier in my life. I love what I do, I'm good at it, and people pay me," she says. "The discovery of using what you have, the skills and passion to be engaged in life makes the job not a job anymore. I'm living my life."

For another, Tennyson made the transition from male form to female form. As she writes on her business website, Capitalize Your Humanity: Coaching for Leaders, "As a transgender woman, I offer a rare perspective from experiencing both male and female gender roles as an employee, manager, executive and business owner."

Her transition involved plenty of turmoil and trauma, she says, which is typical. She denied, she blocked, she experimented until one day she finally realized who she really was, she says. Tennyson is now deeply comfortable with herself.

"I don't think about being transgender," she says. "I just am right. When I look in the mirror, I see Vanessa. I don't see a woman or a man, or some essence of something. I see me. And whether I was in a male form or a female form, I was still that person. The female form allowed me to expand into places that I'd always been comfortable but wasn't allowed to express."

Like the participants in the Change Makers program, many of Tennyson's clients are late in their careers. They worked hard. They bought a house. They did well at work. Yet in their fifth or sixth decade they find themselves restless. They still want to work, be useful and, perhaps most important, find a calling, something meaningful in their unretirement. Looked at that way, it's hardly surprising the journey isn't easy.

"The process of discovery is filled with pivots and inflection points and opportunities you just don't expect," says Tennyson.

She pushes her clients to focus on understanding who they are during the transition period. She notes that the people she works with are qualified to do many jobs, but which one should they take? The answer lies in understanding better who they are and what drives them.

"The journey is less about what can I do, and much more about who am I and what should I be doing with that," she says. "And once we discover who we are, it's really simple because the field opens up. You can do a lot of different things with your experience and your skill set, but who you are actually defines what that should be."

One practical step to help gain a better sense of self is to work at producing "five power adjectives." Power adjectives paint a picture and evoke emotions. For instance, "nice" isn't a power adjective, while "bountiful" is one. The exercise is designed to encourage people to capture what makes them tick. Power adjectives are critical to creating a value statement.

Here is Tennyson's value statement: "I live out my values authentically by harnessing my empathetic and intuitive skills to help others find the truth within themselves, creating inspirational and intentional behaviors to live their fullest lives without hesitation or ambiguity."

Her paragraph took at least five to six iterations to get it right. She says the effort pays off. "And so, getting to a point where I can describe who I am and own it is the hard part, but once I get there, then everything opens up," she says.

A theme in so many columns and conversations published in Next Avenue since 2012 has been the powerful desire among more and more older people to be useful and to give back. The transition into a new path will take time. The return from the journey is well worth the effort.

Chris Farrell is senior economics contributor for American Public Media's Marketplace. An award-winning journalist, he is author of the books "Purpose and a Paycheck:  Finding Meaning, Money and Happiness in the Second Half of Life" and "Unretirement: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community and the Good Life." Read More