Education: You Can Teach An Old Dog New Tricks

If you find yourself craving direction, focus and self-discipline in a context outside of the workplace, why not try dipping a toe back into education?

Even if you hated academia when you were young, it may well be rewarding to try again. A lot of the stress is removed when you’re studying by choice with no obligation to continue if you don’t enjoy it. And if you’ll allow me to get a little bit classical for a moment, once you give it a try you may end up thinking along the same lines as Seneca: ‘Retirement without the love of letters is a living burial.’

While conducting research for ‘Great Retirement, Great Sex,’ I interviewed Peter, who told me about his initially very difficult experiences of sudden retirement. Peter had worked for thirty years as a warehouse operative for a large retailer where he drove a mini-fork-lift, unloaded deliveries and unpacked boxes.

‘I turned down the move up to supervisor more times than I can remember.’ He always exceeded his targets and liked being exactly where he was.

But everything changed after an accident at work caused Peter to slip a disc and put him out of action in the business for good. He received more than £200,000 pounds in compensation. ‘I had to have a couple of operations privately and still might have to have another one. I don’t know how the wife has put up with it.’

Peter and his wife, Jane, preferred to be interviewed separately. Jane shed a lot of light on just how deeply Peter’s sudden change of circumstances had affected him. ‘He was popular, played darts in a local league and was always the comedian in the crowd, but after the incident his personality changed overnight. He would sit around the house and go quiet...’

He agreed he hadn’t exactly been at his most chipper after the accident, but turned the focus to the sudden change in outlook that occurred for him on the penultimate night of a surprise vacation to Andalusia that Jane had booked.

While unloading his troubles to a man named Geoff that he’d met at the bar that night, he began to view his prospects differently. Geoff provided the practical suggestion that Peter take some kind of course. Realising that he was so miserable he had to try something, Peter decided to give it a go.

 He enrolled on an engineering night class and despite having been ‘kicked out of more subjects than I passed at school’ found himself picking it up with ease.

He says that everything is different now: ‘after taking a few computer classes I decided that I wanted to try and get an engineering degree from the Open University. I would never have dreamed of doing something like that before, and I can tell you, I’ve had some funny looks when I tell people but it turns out that I’m not quite as hopeless as I thought.’

Whether you’re interested in returning to education to get some letters after your name or just to learn about a subject that has always interested you, there are several options:

The Open University offers 600 university-level courses in more than 60 subjects and you can distance learn from the comfort of your own home. The learning environment is a social platform too, through which you can make like-minded friends through joining online study groups.

If it’s actually predominantly the community element you’re attracted to, then the University of the Third Age could be for you. Yes, it may sound like a sinister new age cult, but it’s actually a great organisation made up of individual learning cooperatives around the UK. It offers a total of 300 subjects in fields such as art, life sciences, computing, and even walking.

There are a huge number of over 60s reaping the benefits of learning in later life. Decades of full-time work can lead to mature students having a more disciplined work ethic than others, so you could say now is the best time to learn!

The topic of my blog next week will be (don’t get too excited) the importance of putting your mind at ease by writing a will. It can be more fun than you think!

The Pledge

Now as I said last week, the Pledge equals the first step on the road to happiness. To make the most of your retirement you need to always keep in mind the fact that you are entitled to make yourself as happy as possible. Clichéd as this may sound, it’s important to wholeheartedly embrace changing phases in your life as exciting new beginnings. 

So let’s jump right in with the Pledge. Repeat after me:

I hereby swear that I will act as young as I feel.

I will not fear getting older or accept a lower quality of life simply because of a number.

I look forward to the stimulating opportunities that each day brings.

I will welcome my new freedom because I deserve it.

And most importantly... I will continue to have a great sex life and never apologise for wanting it.  

To accept the Pledge is to actively take advantage of the power that a positive attitude can have in life. Being open to happiness is the starting point to creating the life you want for yourself. Not only this, but it may also prompt you to notice and appreciate the good things you have already. These could include a loving family, a fulfilling range of interests, or even a doting dog that loves you unconditionally (even more so now that you’re retired and have much more time to give love back!).

You should also recognise that you are fully capable of changing many aspects of your life that you don’t like, often through attitude alone. Remember, negatives are very often positives in disguise! You just need to keep a look out for them.

Volunteering in Israel after selling my first business, I met a number of inspiring people who were able to do just this. I remember feeling guilty at first, for instance, when I referred a clearly over-qualified 61-year-old former Soviet University teacher for a cleaning job. Yet he told me he was optimistic about the future and confident that this experience would lead to him finding much more suitable work later. He said regaining the opportunity to work at all had given him back his self-respect.  One year on I was delighted to hear he was now teaching in a local high school.

We can all learn a lot from individuals like this, those who are able to view even the worst situations advantageously. In the words of Winston Churchill, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” I know which I’d rather be.

In my next blog I’ll discuss how to use this positivity to fight society’s ageist attitudes and take flight out of the pigeonhole.

Why, Larry?

16 years ago I sold my business that I had previously managed for 16 years.  The return from all the years of hard work, long hours, and stress was more than generous.  I was free from all the pressures of running a recruitment business with 24 offices, supplying up to 4,000 people a week to hundreds of different companies. 

With mixed emotions, I banked my cheque and headed off for sunnier lands with my wife Michele and my three children aged 13, 11, and eight. For two years I worked for a charity organisation helping new immigrants, mainly from the Former Soviet Union and Ethiopia settle into life in a new land. 

It was a time when I really got to know my children, something I would have missed if I had not sold out.  This was a joy and something I will forever appreciate,  but I really missed the UK. My work with the charity and the adventure overseas just masked the fact that I was retired. 

So, we packed up once again and returned to the UK, unemployed, yet relatively financially independent.  Sounds good, sounds lucky, sounds like most people’s dream, but in reality I felt bereft, lonely, and a little irrelevant, a lot like empty nest syndrome and definitely not that sexy.

After a few weeks back in the UK I was contacted by my financial advisors, one of the largest accountancy firms in the world, who asked me if I would be interested in presenting at a conference that was designed for high worth individuals considering retirement.  For the company it was a great opportunity, at this level if a client retired they would often sell their businesses which meant the company would receive some high fees. 

They said that I would have the closing spot which would deal with the emotional aspects of retirement and of course they would pay me for the work.  I was so excited for the prospect of some real work, three paid conferences.  I began to feel alive again and set to preparing for my entry into the world of conference speakers, which unfortunately, in relation to this firm was to be short lived. 

I called the speech ‘How to retire and still have a great sex life’ in which I described the journey I had made from feeling relevant, with a routine, a purpose, status and a life that was full of interesting and challenging conversations with both colleagues and customers, to my present state.  I warned the audience that whether you’re a Director or at a lower level, once you have given up work and are in that period of re- establishing your life, you often didn’t feel as sexy as you may have before.  That bit of information, together with the fact that a number of delegates said that they had second thoughts about giving up work after hearing about my experiences, I found myself promptly unemployed after just one gig.

Writing the book Great Retirement Great Sex has actually taken me more than 14 years. The first version was written 12 years ago when I was too young to fully appreciate the challenges of this stage of my life.  This final version focuses not only on how to cope with this life changing event but looks in great detail at how our sex life changes over this period.  I have been inspired by people’s accounts of how sex continues to play an important part in our lives just through our 60’s and beyond. 

So, if you want a book that will show you how to have amazing penetrative sex with multiple orgasms then you may be disappointed.  Society assumes that your sex-life must fizzle out at a certain age, but thankfully this is nonsense.  As you can discover, a great sex-life is built on intimacy rather than intercourse and represents an intrinsic aspect of our personal well-being.  If you want to have a great sex-life by making simple and practical changes then read the book.

Next week with you I will tell you about the Pledge. This is the beginning of the road to a happier life – whatever your age!