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Jan 14, 2022Liked by Larry Cornett, Ph.D.

Great episode. One thought on the (sad) story of your friend who passed away shortly after retiring. While also a sad tale, I think it ties in with your messages of maintaining agency in one's life and career.

In a prior life, I was a junior in a professional services firm that worked closely with lots of successful owner-operated companies. These were entrepreneurial people who enjoyed what they did, and whose identities were often inseparable from their businesses.

When clients would consider selling their businesses or retiring, one of the partners of the firm would always counsel his clients to do a test run of retirement or make plans to be deeply involved with something (a cause, new business, church/religion, a project, etc.) He would then relate the stories of former clients who would pass away within a year of retirement. These people had built impressive businesses and careers over long time frames, and would sell their businesses in their 60's or 70's. It seems retirement simply didn't hold the meaning for them that engagement with a larger purpose and source of fulfilment - which is what their businesses were to them - would provide.

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