Living With Purpose After Selling Your Business or Leaving Your Job

You've just made a major decision about your life. You want to sell your business or leave the company you are working for and start your retirement. However, retirement cannot be solely about travelling, enjoying your grandkids, or some other activity you desire, especially since you have anywhere from 10 to 30+ years ahead of you. How do you transition out of a business to not running a business or step away from your long-term career?

With the Baby Boomer generation headed towards making a transition in the near future, it is imperative that individuals do not end up without a plan for what they will do next. Too often, business owners who leave the business (or individuals leaving their careers) will think that they can deal with their lives in a positive manner once the transition is done. However, the following negative experiences are likely to occur in the case where the business owner has not planned for this stage of their lives:

"Retirement Remorse" - People who don't have a plan for a fulfilling new future and don't know what they are going to do with all the free time they suddenly have will often become depressed, bored, and angry with themselves or others. They miss their old lives, because at least then they had something interesting and meaningful to do. They often wish they could go back to "the way things were".

"Retirement Rut" - Often, individuals who have successfully left their full time positions will find themselves spending their time on meaningless and purposeless activities just to keep busy. They become dissatisfied with their lives because these activities don't give them a sense of meaning or purpose.

"Post Transition Stress Disorder" (The other PTSD) - This is often experienced by individuals who have left their companies without doing proper thought-provoking planning for their lives prior to leaving. They often have a loss of enthusiasm for life, they feel that there is nothing to look forward to, and that life has no more meaning and purpose. These individuals will often end up making poor life decisions and rash personal choices in order to make sense out of life once again.

"Gray Divorce" - The rate of Baby Boomers that end up in a divorce is markedly increasing. Spouses are often not prepared for the "full nest" syndrome that occurs when the business owner/individual is now home 24/7.

So what does a person do to plan a purposeful and meaningful life post transition? The answer lies in doing internal preparation as well as external preparation for their retirement years. One of the most important activities an individual should do to prepare themselves internally for the transition is to come up with a list of all of their fears, problems and challenges they have surrounding this change. Then, they need to really expand their thinking about how these negative conditions can be turned around into opportunities.

Another activity a person should consider is how to define themselves into a whole person - not a person defined by what they are pre-transition. One exercise to consider would be to list all of their accomplishments they have done throughout their lives on a personal vs. professional level. They can also brainstorm through all of the life transitions they have gone through and analyze and become aware of the lessons learned by going through past transitions. Often this can provide individuals with new insights on how these lessons learned can be applied to the future transition in a positive manner.

Next, an individual should do some thought-provoking exercises on what provides meaning and purpose to them as a whole person, not just as a business owner or career professional. What brings them joy? What makes them happy? What gives them a sense of direction in their personal lives? What gives them positive self-worth? The more an individual can give answers to these questions, the better!

The external preparation involves an individual coming up with lifestyle ideas in the following areas:

Physical Health Activities

Intellectual Stimulation

Recreational/Creative Activities

Activities with Spouse/Partner

Activities with Family Members

Residence - where Ideally do I want to be?

Social Connections

Spirituality/Faith

Income Producing Work

Volunteer/Philanthropic Activities

Once a person has brainstormed ideas for each of these areas, the time comes to make a final decision on what they want to do for each of these areas and which ones provide the most meaning and purpose for themselves. Then, individuals can come up with a tactical plan on how they are going to implement these activities into their lives post-transition, and how to prioritize them.

Of course, these suggestions are only a small part of what a person can do (and should do) to make a successful transition out of a business or career. Couples should work on developing these plans together. Often, it makes sense to seek out a professional consultant who is trained and/or certified in transition planning. These individuals can provide a systematic process that takes into account many of the mental and emotional issues and concerns that an individual may be facing with the pending transition. They often have proven tools, exercises and programs to make the process successful and positive for the individual.

If you are looking at transitioning in the near future, don't make the mistake that many individuals do, which is essentially ending up on the "other side" without a comprehensive plan for your lifestyle that will provide you with ongoing meaning and purpose. Take the time for planning and you will experience a wonderful retirement and quality of life after your transition!

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What If This Is All There Is?

In Search Of Answers

When a new disciple came to the Master, he was subjected to the following examination:

"Do you know the one person who will never abandon you in the whole of your lifetime?"

"Who is it?" "You."

"And do you know the answer to every question you may have?"

"What is it?" "You."

"And can you guess the solution to every one of your problems?"

"I give up." "You."

Anthony de Mello's delightful parable highlights the growing tension to look for answers outside ourselves.

In Zen Buddhism, it is said every question contains its own answer.

It was the American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson who declared: "What lies behind us, and what lies before us, are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

Many search for answers outside themselves to make sense of their life. Some give up, while many are disheartened since the solutions never arrive in the form they hoped for.

If something within you seeks change, it will only come from inward - not from an external source.

"Many people confuse or conflate 'purpose' with 'meaning' in life. There's a very important distinction. Meaning in life asks "Why am I here?" "Purpose in life is concerned with what we most deeply value, and purposeful living is concerned with whether we're living for what matters most," affirms author Victor J Strecher in: Life on Purpose: How Living for What Matters Most Changes Everything.

We want some form of validation we are living a purposeful life. Yet the irony is, nobody can grant us that because our lives are independent in relation to our experience of it. Others can only share wisdom relative to their experience.

If this message resonates with you, your personal evolution is calling you to expand, not to contract.

You needn't know the details, yet you recognise you are dissatisfied with your current conditions.

I call it leading with love because life answers the call of your soul when you go in search of it.

I have often said, life doesn't know what it will become until you step into it. Until you show up with purpose and seize opportunities.

We want to live a meaningful life instead of allowing external forces to control us.

If you consider life from what is missing, your mind looks for answers based on the form of the question.

Yet, if you ask: "How can I live my fullest potential and enjoy the process?" you will attract conditions in alignment with that very question.

"Counterintuitive as it sounds, taking on more of the 'right' things can actually increase the sense of meaning and accomplishment, even if your job does not specifically require it," states author Jonathan Fields in How to Live a Good Life.

Separating The Wheat From The Chaff

Author Neale Donald Walsch reminds us we are stuck between a rock and a hard place: "You are afraid to die, and you're afraid to live. What a way to exist."

So how can you find peace of mind within your circumstances?

Pursue that which resonates with your highest values. Life is full of ups and downs and you will make many mistakes along the way. Yet, those mistakes are pivotal in drawing you closer to what is significant.

Rather than dwell on the mistakes, see it as separating the wheat from the chaff.

From chaos emerges order.

What is important to you ought to be pursued by letting go of minor concerns. Life is full of contrasts to help you make conscious choices.

Contrast exists in the subtlest details. For instance, an unpleasant thought is distinguished by a positive one, and conflict is contrasted by kindness.

It involves choosing your focus of attention to find meaning through your questions.

Similarly, people are disillusioned that happiness is not a constant state. Here's an enlightened perspective. You can be happy, yet experience struggle and still turn your attention to gratitude by shifting from negativity to enthusiasm.

We're not talking about false optimism or Pollyanna syndrome. However, recognising the dualistic nature of life and aligning your awareness with your highest values.

Author and Jungian psychotherapist James Hollis states in What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life: "Healing, satisfaction, and meaning only come when we identify what feeds our soul, and find also the courage and the where-withal to make it happen."

Your point of reference determines the meaning in your circumstances. It is why altruistic people tie their good deeds to service and the meaning contained within it.

Conversely, those who align with darkness, act on impulses and unconscious desires. They are conditioned by forces not of their choosing.

Pay Attention to Your Personal Evolution

You can stop struggling any moment rather than trying to fill the void within.

Accept life's circumstances are always serving your personal development.

There is no place to reach, other than paying attention to your personal evolution.

Assuredly, searching for purpose and meaning outside you is analogous to using your hands to carry water, instead of a bucket. In gathering water from a stream being careful not to spill it, you are left empty-handed.

So it is with life.

Holding on to what you desire most causes it to vanish because of the anxiety devoted to it.

The great American mythologist Joseph Campbell said: "People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about."

Avoid looking for answers to empty questions, but consider what is already complete in your life. Use that as the foundation to what you wish to realise.

Nothing outside you will bring about what is contained within.

It was the imminent Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung who said: "Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."

This sentiment is echoed by Anthony de Mello's fable of the Master who counsels his new disciple, noting that everything you desire will arise by looking within.

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