Gains and Losses
When considering any significant life change, do you make a list to help organize your thoughts? I call mine the gains/losses list. Our personal orientation to time plays a role in how we approach this kind of analysis. We all have a preference to mentally dwell in either the past, the present, or the future. In my experience, people who lean toward the future are more naturally inclined to focus first on the benefits that lie ahead. When thinking about life after your primary career, it’s easier to imagine what we’ll gain because we’ve dreamed about it for years.
The Gains column might look like this:
• Financial freedom
• Pursue hobbies & fitness
• Options about where and how I choose to live
• Choices about how I spend my time
• Flexibility to shift my plans as I choose
• Time to invest in the relationships that matter to me
• A major decline in the amount of BS I’ll have to put up with
Such pleasant dreams! Why ruin them by coming up with anything negative? Well, there are some inevitable losses most successful people experience when they wrap up a primary career. The more achievement, the more responsibility you carried, the more you need to know what to expect. I’ll illustrate with the story of my former neighbor, “Barney”, a recently retired two-star general (some details changed to protect his privacy.) He was in his late fifties.
In his boredom, Barney decided to take on the president’s job of our homeowner’s association. He loaded a clipboard with flyers he designed, highlighting the HOA’s “policies”–lots of info, tiny font. Until then, these were just guidelines, mostly common sense and rarely enforced. On the back of the clipboard he created a ruler, allowing him to quickly determine when someone’s grass was in need of a trim. He spent the first week holding inspection, slowly walking the streets, taking notes. He would knock on doors, letting people know they were in violation of policies most of us had never heard of. He made sure we knew it was just a friendly warning, although nothing in his countenance was friendly. Week two, he started putting notices in people’s mailboxes. By week three, the general had been given so many colorful instructions on where to stick his notices that he resigned in a rage. A couple of months later, they moved away.
Some years later I told this story to a retired pilot friend who had worked for Barney. He remembered him as a great leader, a compassionate leader. I was surprised because I couldn’t stand the guy. Knowing what I know now, I think he was, at least in part, grieving the losses that came from leaving a thirty-year Air Force career.
Loss of Position–After decades of people standing to attention whenever he walked into a room, being saluted by every passing service member, civilian life was destined to be a tough transition. It must have been a heart blow to experience life as an ordinary person.
Loss of Purpose–Barney’s last assignment had been some super top-secret job at the Pentagon. In terms of impact, being president of his neighborhood HOA was a few hundred rungs down the ladder. It’s the rare person who can walk away from a major responsibility and downshift to a mundane role in one step.
Loss of Power–The only tool in Barney’s toolbox was positional power, of which he now had exactly none.
Loss of Perqs–More than once, the general bragged about the thousands of people he used to command. About his operational staff, his personal aides. The castle where they lived in Germany. Aside from health care and his retirement, the only perquisite left was the two-star sticker on his car that made sure he got a salute when he drove on base to have a drink at the Officer’s Club.
Loss of Identity–More than anything, Barney was struggling to remember who he was apart from the uniform he had worn and the role he had played for most of his adult life.
The full impact of these combined losses, I believe, brought out some unfortunate behaviors in my neighbor. If only I’d known then what I know now, if only I’d been a friend and not just another critic. It’s easy to see Barney’s story as an extreme example. Your experience may not be the same as Barney’s in magnitude, but it could easily look like his in kind.
Its stories like this that make this work deeply personal for me. So reach out here. Let’s set the stage for you to handle your losses with a bit more grace.
Let me know how I can support you in your own transition or with someone you care about.
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