Mattering
- Leigh Gerstenberger
- Feb 23
- 2 min read
Recently while going through my Apple News Feed, I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled, The Retirement Crisis No One Warns You About: Mattering.
The article references the predicament that many new retirees find themselves in, the deep human need to feel valued and to have a chance to add value to the world.
The article resonated with me in that shortly after I retired, I learned very quickly that much of my own identity was tied up in what I did for a living.
This point was driven home somewhat painfully for me during a cocktail party I attended after retiring from a forty-plus-year career in the financial services industry. At the party, someone asked me what I did for a living. For the first time in a long time, I stammered, not knowing what to say. For years my response would have been, “I’m a senior vice president and I run the trust department at a local bank”. However, having just retired, I could no longer make that statement and found myself at a loss for words.
For me, this drove home the point that my own identity was too wrapped up in what I did for a living.
As a result of some executive coaching, mentoring and studying over the past several years, I’ve intentionally “reconstructed” my life with a number of activities from which I derive great pleasure and satisfaction.
My wife and I are blessed to have all our immediate family living nearby so we’re constantly involved in the lives of our children and grandchildren. I volunteer on several non-profit boards, lead several faith-based discussion groups each week and do some career coaching. All this to say that I feel that I’ve successfully navigated the sea change of moving from working full time, having successfully transitioned to my encore career (a term popularized by Marc Freedman in his book The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife), which I also highly recommend.
Due to copyright restrictions I’m unable to publish the article from the Wall Street Journal however you may be able to access via the following link.
The article is based on a new book entitled Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connections and Purpose by Jennifer Breheny Wallace which is the subject of this week’s book recommendation.
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