"How do you plan for retirement, beyond making sure you have enough money" someone asked me the other day. "All kinds of ways" was my initial response. Results from Statistics Canada surveys have shown that whatever your approach to retirement (like me considering 'non-retirement'; like some of my clients engaging 'un-retirement'; like many others considering traditional 'life is now one long weekend') you will be more likely to feel satisfied with your experience if you have done some advance planning.

So as I was on my recent short vacation at my beloved Oceanstone Inn near Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia (www.oceanstone.ns.ca for those of you looking for Paradise on the North Atlantic) I found myself reflecting a lot on this notion of planning.

And I realized that for most people, planning only occurs at very low levels of thinking: where will I live? where will I travel to? what will I do with myself? how will I fill my days? how will I make ends meet? Few of us actively and mindfully cast our thinking higher to explore our beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. And yet, in my experience of my own life and that of hundreds upon hundreds of clients over the years, I know that life only really starts to becoming interesting and exciting when we begin to consider those higher levels of thinking. Who am I in this world? What makes me tick? What brings me joy? If I were to think of my life as a fairy tale, which character am I being? In what ways do my beliefs about myself and the world limit what I hold as possible? What are my beliefs anyhow ...and what are the ones that I cling to because they were my parent's or my teacher's and they feel like burden to me?

And to go even higher ...who, even at this late stage of my life, could I become if I decided to let go of my hold on 'reality' being a certain way? who can I get to be if give myself permission to consider things that are totally new to me and I don't allow my fear of the unknown to keep me small and apparently safe?

And then even higher ...what brings meaning to my life such that if it weren't present I might just choose to check out? is there a sense of greater purpose about me and why I'm on this earth that I've been ignoring for some time that perhaps I need to begin to pay attention to and flesh out? what constitutes, deep inside of me, a feeling of being deeply connected to something outside myself (for many that will outside oneself will be thought of God, the Creator, humanity, etc.).

It is not unusual for people to feel a little foolish and vulnerable to even consider thinking about these higher levels of thinking. For most of us, they are the realm of priests, philosophers and mystics. And yet, they are the types of thinking that actually have the potential to revolutionize our life and what we hold as possible for ourselves.

So as I wandered the beaches of Oceanstone it became clearer to me that there is lots of evidence that planning your retirement at low levels of thinking will absolutely make a difference for you in terms of the quality of your experience of retirement. But if you are one of those people who is holding out for the second half of your life being way better, way more exciting and gratifying than the first half has been, it also became clear to me that raising your thinking to those higher levels is where the real planning must go on.

Easy for me to say, right. Absolutely. And only easy for me to say because I have chosen to invest myself in discovering how to raise my thinking to those higher levels. You can too, easily and inexpensively if you choose to move beyond the habituated way that you now live, if you choose to invest in books, CDs and workshops that focus on the inner landscape instead of continuing to spend your money on the latest fashions, new hairdo's, trips to exotic destinations that don't satisfy or gratify. In this the AA folks got it absolutely right ...if you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you've always got!

So in planning your retirement you have choice like you have in everything else. Keep your thinking low level and you'll be guaranteed to have a retirement pretty much that is an extension of the life you've lived to date. Invest in getting outside the box of your own thinking and create a future that you quite possibly can't even anticipate at this stage but that some niggling little part of you senses is there. One good place to start getting outside the box of your own thinking is to visit my website www.ouicoach.com and read some of the free articles or go to my extensive Links section and check out some of the great service providers gathered there. I especially encourage you to explore those folks who have learned to work with a WEL-Systems perspective in the services they offer. As someone who has done a lot of personal growth and development work, for me, this is the easiest, most elegant, supportive and most expansive approach to becoming more that I've ever found. I wonder what you'll choose for yourself ????

Do you ever wonder if you'll ever get over your bad habits? Which are the ones that concern you about taking with you into retirement, or at least into old age if you're one of us who have decided that you aren't retiring? And why is that even important you may well ask. Because there is lots and lots of clear evidence that unless we take some specific action, we don't change all that much as we age.

The bad habits we have in youth and middle age move forward with us as we get older, familiar companions that comfort us in some strange way even as they drive us crazy. What are yours? Are you a spendthrift? Do you eat too much? Exercise to little? Have affairs? Flirt? Are you miserly? Do you struggle to enjoy yourself? Are you an unhappy person in your heart and soul?

I remember having a conversation with a potential coaching client some time ago. This person was having a fair bit of difficulty in his interpersonal relationships but wasn't convinced that coaching would make a difference for him. Like many of us, he had a host of reasons and justifications for why he was having so much difficulty in his life. And almost all of his reasons and justifications had to do with things outside of himself. He was too busy to meet everyone else's needs, he had had a difficult early life and hadn't really learned how to be 'politically correct', he had a commitment to being brutally honest with himself and everyone else, etc., etc. As we talked he revealed that he was looking forward to his retirement which was about 10 years away. His concerns about investing in coaching were that he might waste all this time and money because once he was retired he just knew that none of this was going to be an issue for him because when he retired he just knew that he'd have enough time and money to correct all the issues he currently faced. As he put it, he'd finally be able to be happy!

After I stopped laughing we had an interesting chat about how it was highly unlikely that his experience of retirement was going to be any different than his experience was right now, unless and until he chose to commit himself to a course of action that would create some internal differences in his way of thinking about himself and the world around him. We change very little in our beliefs, values and attitudes because our external circumstances change. Typically, we need to decide that we are going change and then create some sort of intervention that will invite us to change.

I say typically because there is always the possibility that some highly potent, external thing will happen that will be the invitation for us to see the world and ourselves differently. The death of a cherised person or pet can sometimes do that, a near death experience, a major loss or accident can also be triggers. But most of the time, for most of us, unless we decide to discover a new way to see the world, we just keep on recreating variations on the same old theme, over and over again. Think about it. How many people go bankrupt multiple times in their lives? Do they set out to keep creating that experience? I don't think so. But for many, simply getting out from under the crushing debt load isn't sufficient motivation to make the kind of changes necessary to not go bankrupt again. How about all those people who marry multiple times? Who move from one lousy job to another over the decades?

They are all repeating certain habits of thinking that keep recreating the same general scenarios. And unless and until they find some sort of way to break the habits, life will continue along that path ...yes, all the way to the grave. Given that our baby boomer generation is one that isn't inclined to live out our habits and patterns in quiet, I'm wondering what kind of colorfully desperate retirements we're about to create for ourselves? I can just see many of us at 75 getting married or declaring bankruptcy for the 6th, 7th or 8th time!

So I encourage you to begin to pay attention to what you hold as your bad habits and begin to wonder how long you are going to allow them to interfere with you having the kind of life you long for? Now is a time in our history when we have almost unlimited access to books and processes that allow us to change whatever we don't like or believe isn't working about our lives. Why wait any longer? Wouldn't it be great to use the years you're edging towards retirement to actually set yourself up so that you can enjoy it once it arrives? Anyone want to come for a walk with me?

"So this is what retirement might feel like", I found my self thinking. You see, we went away for a long overdue R & R weekend. And we were surrounded by couples who were clearly either retired or were on the verge, based on the conversations we heard around us.

And as much as I enjoyed our time away, as much as I revelled in the luxury of a high end B & B, great dining, wonderful vistas everywhere we turned, I also knew that it felt special because it was a respite within the broader canvas of a life that includes meaningful work.

Now that I am back in my office writing this blog, considering an article that is beginning to take shape and form, getting prepared for a coaching session this afternoon, I find myself wondering what that weekend would have felt like for me if I knew that it was merely a different setting for a life that was a form of 'endless weekend'. How much of it's sense of specialness, of time suspended for a few moments, of luxurious indulgence had to do with the actual experience itself and how much of it had to do with it being juxtaposed against a life that includes lots of demands on my time, lots of deadlines and appointments to be met, lots of need to use my intellect rather than simply luxuriating in my body.

For certain there are no answers, merely questions for me continue to ponder. And from where I sit this morning, I am inclined towards the view that this weekend has highlighted for me the desire to redefine the later years of life not as retirement and working but as some sort of hybrid of the two. A period in one's life where work assumes a different characteristic: it becomes much more like play you get paid for and so your desire to 'retire' from the process of work is diminished because it is such an engaging and enliving process to remain involved with.

Perhaps the question to explore is less about 'retirement' and more about a shifting attitude towards work. Hmmm, that'll give me something to wonder about in the coming days!

The photo I've used for today's posting is one I took over the weekend. For me the metaphor of the netting over the ripening grapes is a great one for today's topic. It speaks to the purpose of play/work as that thing that protects us from coming to a premature end ...there is lots of growing into ourselves that is still possible. Will be use a device such as play/work to create the opportunity for that final spurt of growth and maturation, or will be simply allow ourselves to hang on the vine and be picked to death by the birds?