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Mar 30
2016
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Helen Whitten
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“Do you think I should learn to play golf?” a friend of mine asked me last week. Her husband, recently retired, has taken up golf and is spending many hours a week on the golf course having lessons and socialising with other golfers. She isn’t sure whether he wants her to join him or whether he enjoys the time alone. They haven’t properly discussed it and when they do endeavour to do so they walk on eggshells, being so polite to one another that my friend doesn’t really believe her husband is being honest about what he would prefer.
Her comment reminded me of when my mother confessed that she and my father had occasionally gone on a holiday that neither of them truly wanted to go on. They just didn’t want to offend the other by rejecting a suggestion – which made me think how important honesty can be in a relationship!
“Do you want to play golf?” I asked my friend. “No, not really,” she replied.
And such are the dilemmas of retirement. How much to do together and how much apart. Each of you may have hobbies that you have pursued over many years and it can be a time to combine these with exploring new activities. People frequently tell me that they are busier in retirement, than they were when they were working.
For me I question how much busyness I want in my life in the future. I feel I have spent the last forty years chasing around either after children or for clients and I long for spaces in the diary. So when I open my Outlook calendar and see weeks ahead full of cluttered commitments my heart sinks! I hadn’t realized how large families become as one’s children, nieces and nephews get married and have families. It is a joy and at the same time can be tiring if too much comes along at once. But it is about balance because if there was nothing in the diary I would, no doubt, feel isolated and bored.
And so it is finding the compromise between together time and individual time that my friend is struggling with. And she gets an emotional pull that somehow she ‘should’ be spending time with her husband even though golf doesn’t appeal to her – and quite possibly her husband is enjoying time on the course on his own. Who’s to know, when being honest about such things can seem like a minefield and one doesn’t want to upset one’s partner, nor he you.
Our sense of self and life changes in this stage of life, I find. One isn’t sure whether one’s health will hold up but one realizes that it’s sensible to travel hopefully and make plans as if all will be well. One isn’t sure how one will manage the bills and leisure pursuits when the monthly salary cheque is no longer coming in and the bank account dips. One wonders whether the plans one is making will be as enjoyable and fulfilling as one hopes. One wonders where we will find that sense of ‘belonging’ that one has experienced in the workplace. Will we miss the work that has been the pattern of our life up to this time?
The reality is that we don’t know what the future holds and whilst this has been the case since the day we were born, it can become a little more anxious-making as one gets older and one’s body shows the odd sign of fatigue. There is an excellent book I read some time ago called Transitions by William Bridges which suggests that in any transitory stage of life (leaving home, getting married, having a baby, changing jobs) one takes time to stop and reflect on which activities and behaviours one might like to let go of and which one would like to develop or take forward into the future.
My friend has decided that she will not take up golf. It isn’t for her. But she is happy that her husband is enjoying life. She has her own interests and they have agreed to put time in the diary for those events they enjoy together. And sometimes this will work and sometimes it won’t – we are, after all, human and fallible, even when we have a few grey hairs on our heads.
How have we ended up with Donald Trump? What have we, the US, the world done to deserve him? It started off as a joke. It’s no joke now. It’s deadly serious.
Of all the brilliant, talented, creative, and wise people in America how has he climbed to the top of the pile? Latest figures show that the population of America is approximately 326, 492, 060 now. It’s hard to believe that from this huge number the people of America have ended up with the lousy choice they now have.
What kind of role model is this man for the children of the world? This presidential election and the level of the personal backbiting the candidates have applied debases the concept of intelligent political debate. Surely the status of this powerful country will be lowered while the rest of the world looks on in amazement? With Trump on one side of the world and Kim Jong-un at the other with Putin in the middle, the world seems a genuinely scary place.
Of course only the wealthy, or those who can attract wealth, can rise to the top in the US. The exposure to press criticism may well also have a bearing. A leader has to be courageous to put their opinions on the line in this era of political correctness – and terrorism. There are few previous leaders of any nation whose private life would have stood up to the sort of scrutiny that today’s leaders face.
And now there is fierce back-biting in the UK Government, the focus of which seems to offer little to the stability of this country. And again, there is knee-jerk response rather than intelligent discussion of the issues.
So I woke this morning reflecting on two moments in my life where I experienced leadership. The first was when I observed a leader who was able to guide a group across rapids and waterfalls in Mexico. He was a Shaman, Mario, showing us the Mayan tombs and surrounding areas. A youngish man (to me!), probably in his forties, with a quiet presence. Indeed, the only Shaman I met on the trip for whom I gained respect. He was a slight man with a pony tail. And all he said to us, quietly, was to follow his footsteps as precisely as we could and to help one another. Just these two things, said with enough conviction that each one of us heard him.
We were a motley crew. Most of us well over forty years old, some with cardiac problems and bypasses, others who had recently had hip replacements, and more. But we took care of one another on the journey across the mountain pools, helped the weaker ones to climb up the rocks to the next pool or held their hand to ensure they didn’t slip on the edge of the waterfall. Mario said nothing more to us and gently balanced his way along the precarious stones and through the waters. There was no shouting, no motivational speech. He simply generated in us a sense of trust that he knew where he was going and he knew how to take us there. It was impressive.
The second time was when I participated in a horse-whispering leadership day. I have ridden all my life but this was something different. I was shown into a large indoor ring and a black pony was released into the ring with me. My instruction was to encourage the horse to follow me. And I felt lost – why should he? I had no halter, no sugar lump and no means of reaching this result in a way that I would previously have adopted. I wasn’t allowed to touch him other than to stroke him and talk with him.
The first thing he did was trot to the corner of the ring where there was an open stable door. He stood and looked outside to the field beyond. I felt a complete idiot: how was I supposed to tempt him back, I wondered?
So I went to him and, as the actions of the horse were reputedly a mirror metaphor of my own experience, I could see exactly why he had gone there. Both he and I would rather have been outside, free, and in that field!
So now what? I fiddled around with him, walking hesitantly in one direction or another. He looked totally disinterested and stayed exactly where he was.
“Do you know where you want him to go?” the leadership facilitator asked me. Aha! Now there was a clue. I hadn’t thought about where I might take him. “If you don’t know where you’re going then why should he follow you?”
Suddenly I got it. The concept of the inner energy that Mario had in taking us across the waterfalls. The inner certainty of where I wanted this horse to go in the ring. I could feel my body language changing as that sense of direction came into my mind, emotion and physiology. I stood taller, opened my shoulders, changed my breathing away from doubt and took a determined step forward. He followed! Wow, was that exciting! And then he followed me around the ring, in figures of eight, on to trot and reverse. Why should he have done? I wasn’t rewarding him with titbits of a bonus but nonetheless the bond we created worked.
In both these moments there was much that was non-verbal. When I had doubt or fear or was unclear about where I was going the horse did not follow me. He didn’t trust me, and with good reason. When I was clear and confident, he did. Mario knew this and he kept us safe that day with his inner energy.
We are all leaders in our own way – in our own lives, in our families, at work. So, as I go forward into retirement, I shall need to remind myself of this clarity, confidence and sense of direction. In the meantime, I shall hope that Americans do not follow the angry energy of Mr Donald Trump.
I write this in the midst of a transition point in my life. I have just passed on my business Positiveworks (www.positiveworks.com) to Sixth Sense Consulting (www.sixthsenseconsulting.co.uk) with a view to retiring from coaching. I am thinking I shall enjoy more time to write (see www.babyboomerpoetry.com ), play, be with my grandchildren, walk in the park and smell the daisies. And yet there is a question lurking that unnerves me. Is this what I shall, indeed, enjoy? Shall I miss the work focus? At the moment I am looking forward to it and delighted that Chris Welford and Jackie Sykes of Sixth Sense are taking my business forward: a real legacy. In a year’s time, though, might I be looking for something else to fill my time, I wonder? Perhaps I have to admit that this is somewhat of an identity crisis!
What shall I respond to that query “and what do you do?” Who am I now? I have worked with this question for many years with coaching clients at transition points in life and career. It is my turn.
I have done transformation before. My friends comment on my ability to recreate myself in many new guises and yet moving into the later stage of life is a poignant moment. More things behind than in front. Fears about health, wealth. Not wanting to outstay one’s welcome and usefulness. Hoping that one’s partner will accept the foibles of older age. Hoping that there will still be many things ahead that will create that sense of wonder in the natural world, things to be curious about, to laugh about.
Life has transformed since my childhood in the 1950s. Those days seem now such an age of innocence and naivety. There is so much to be grateful for today in the developments of health, technology, ability to travel the world, resources available for those who are disabled, equal opportunity. As a woman I can see that there is nothing theoretically stopping a girl today achieving whatever she wants – other than her own self-doubt and the subliminal messages that girls still get about their abilities. I heard Dame Carol Black, former President of the Royal College of Physicians, on Desert Island Discs recently. She said that her key message to girls is “go for it”. I would echo that. There have been so many times when I have felt nervous but have been nudged by someone to try something I didn’t feel confident to achieve.
I would also echo strongly Dame Carol Black’s comment that women do not have to lead in the same way as men. One of the things that still saddens me is how many of my female clients in business feel themselves to be somehow ‘wrong’ in their approach because they can’t (and why should they?) carry out their role in the same way that their male bosses and colleagues do. I hope that they and my granddaughters can grow to be confident that their way is just fine and that it is this precise difference that is their strength. The world needs balancing, the yin and the yang, so that women’s voices and perspectives have equal parity with those of men in families, business and government.
I therefore leave the world of work a changed person to the timid girl I was when I started as a secretary in publishing. I feel happy that I carved out my career and have helped others to do the same. And now I have to carve out my retirement and be willing to leave the reins in younger hands than mine. To those who have more energy.
One thing I have learnt from my clients and friends who are and have been retiring is that it is important to leave a space for the transformation. Not to rush into some activity just because there is a space but to allow a period of rest and spaciousness, the creative gap into which something might (or might not!) flow. I feel a sense of anticipation that, just as other periods of my life have surprised me, there will be something that pops in now that will again both surprise and delight. I am looking forward to discovering other aspects of myself that have been dormant or have not yet surfaced. I know, as one of that big group of ‘Baby Boomers’ born after World War 2, that many of you will be going through similar experiences alongside me. Perhaps we can journey together.