Speak with confidence

 Speak confidently as if you are right, but listen carefully as if you are wrong. Early on in life, I realized that if you listen carefully to people you could learn from them. Over my career I have found success by surrounding and supporting those who are smarter than me or who have better skill sets then I do.

One thing that my father taught me when I was about 15 years old was that there would be people who take advantage of their position. These people would bully, cajole, or demean those who they had power over because they could. My dad said, if you are in that situation as a worker, you have a choice, be bullied, stand up for yourself, or quit. He also said that if you are on equal standing as a supervisor with the bully, it is your responsibility to tell them to stop, and if they don’t then you need to report them and if that does not work, then you need to leave. Management which allows this type of behavior is not worth working with and you will regret your decision to stay.

Over my working life, I was fortunate to work with only one boss that was a bully. I stood up for myself and for my pains I was fired. At the time, it was devastating, but eventually it was a blessing. As a result of being fired, I took some time to revaluate my priorities and changed my career path. When I went into education, I remembered what my dad said, and never tried to force my students or bully them. I also, because of my mom and my dad, grew up with a sense of confidence that I could do whatever I wanted to do.

As I moved into new areas that others were not sure of, I listened to what people said and I learned from them, and I also learned how to speak with confidence. Speak with confidence and it has a strange effect on people, they want to believe you and that creates a sense of responsibility for them. I have found that whatever I went into, over time I have moved into leadership positions and in those positions I always speak with confidence but listen as if I am wrong.

Volunteering in retirement

 At some stage in retirement, our thoughts turn to how we can contribute to helping our children and our grandchildren as well as contributing to the well-being of the community. Many of us are already heavily invested in the welfare of our children and grandchildren. However, giving them money is not the answer what is important is that you give them your time and energy to help children develop in a way that will lead to a well-adjusted society in the future.

Some of us may feel that we have done enough by raising our own children whereas others look to volunteer for organizations that are focused on the well-being of citizens. Many of us are likely to be involved in caregiving for a spouse, elderly parents, children, grandchildren, or friends. Some of us believe that we are already contributing to society by doing this caring so we may not want to help outside our family circle.

When we volunteer, it may not live up to our expectations. Some of us who volunteer find volunteering fulfilling but some find it disappointing. People with specific skills may be asked to do jobs that do not match their skill set.

Sometimes, permanent employees of the agencies, we volunteer for can feel threatened by the competence of some volunteers. With government funding and other sources being reduced, there is a real fear there is the possibility that volunteers could displace the employees. 

If volunteers are stuffing envelopes or delivering flyers, they may find that such tasks lack meaning and eventually withdraw. The challenge is to find a desirable balance of a situation in which retired volunteers can help their communities and also find meaning. If tasks lack meaningful engagement, seniors who volunteer will not stay.

Identity issues faced in the early stages of life can recur, especially when people have reached retirement. Although the contexts of retirement and the earlier stages of life differ, drawing on the emotional tensions first encountered earlier in life can facilitate self-awareness and increased understanding and subsequent management of some of the challenges of retirement.

Retirement and couples

 Since I started work, back in the 60s' there have been many changes in living arrangements for both couples and families. There are many who have studied these changes in relationships over time. This does affect the dynamics of retirement, with more women working and fewer women being exclusively housewives, the balance between independence and dependence has significantly changed couples’ relationship patterns that may carry over when both or one person wants to retire.

Couples are often forced to accept more independence in their relationships as a matter of economic necessity. Dependency and co-dependency can result in stresses that can end a relationship. Sometimes the degree of independence in a relationship can be carried into and even exacerbated by retirement.

When there is an age difference within a couple, one person might be retired while the other is still working. Women may be reluctant to retire until necessary if they have spent earlier years raising a family but are now engaged with their careers. For retired older male partners of such women, the prospect of “home alone” and “cabin fever” may result unless the partner is willing to live more independently. Also, women who have stayed at home may have developed life, apart from their partner, that they wish to continue even when their partner retires.

The balance between intimacy and isolation is important for a variety of living arrangements. However, the transition to retirement begins a new lifestyle that can change the nature of past patterns of intimacy and isolation. A couple probably needs to adjust to the acceptance of increased mutual independence in retirement if their retirements are not concurrent. 

This urge to merge is often motivated by the need for security or the lowering of anxiety regarding the tenure of a relationship. There is also the magical belief that this merging will bring healing that solves many personal problems. Research based on socio-emotional selectivity theory suggests that as people age, they may prefer fewer but closer friends whose company they enjoy. As a result, there could be more time spent in solitude unless retirees spend more time with fewer friends.

It is hard for us to make new friends. When we were younger, we could make friends and it was easy. We made friends at work, with people we shared hobbies with, with people we met at our children’s activities. We cast a wide social net and met many acquaintances some of whom became friends. Our social network shrinks over time, friends move, or we move, children move on, and those who share our hobbies are younger. There are many reasons why it is hard to make new friends. There is also the distinct possibility that retirees who move to a distant new residence will not have a shared history with new friends formed in that location. The social convoy of which they were a part in their previous community is left behind. This can become an additional loss to those already triggered by retirement.

 

Should retirement be abolished?

I read an interesting paper about the future of work and retirement that at one point said "It is a difficult thing to say but my conclusion is that retirement should be abolished. It should be abolished in tandem with the major transformations of what constitutes work and employment now taking place in the technology-driven world of work of the twenty-first century."

The author argues “that the divide between working life and retirement is equally an artificial one that has lost relevance in post-industrial society.”

The premise is that all of us live in a “post-industrial society” which is not true. Many of us still work manual jobs that take their toll on us. The attack on unionized jobs by corporations, libertarian and others over the years have made many worksites unsafe and harder for workers

There are forces over which we have no control in our working lives, factors such as technological advances, and other unpredictable events which change our jobs and because there is the emphasis on the individual, it is up to us to figure out how to adapt and change. Support for individuals facing change may be available but it appears always at the employers advantage. As employers and government have shifted the responsibility of caring for oneself as we age from themselves to the workers, we are seeing more seniors in poverty.

Some would argue that there have always been peaks and troughs in people’s working lives related to raising children, ill-health and disability, and caring, as well as educational activities. Ongoing employment into later life will emerge as a possibility that workers are faced with, because we have not built safeguards into our system.

Pensions used to be a vehicle for workers to provide themselves and their families when they could no longer work. Starting in the 80’s and the rise of liberalism and libertarianism that changed. Over the years we have slowly adapted the idea that the individual is responsible for themselves when they are retired. This worked when prices were rising slowly, and inflation was in check. Now with inflation rising, stocks plummeting, and pensions being taxed higher, those who have retried are caught in a perfect storm. To pay the rent, or mortgage and feed themselves they have to go back to work and the authors argument that there is an artificial divide between work and retirement is going to come true.