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Center for Enlightened Leadership
 
THE LENS – A QUARTERLY E-NEWSLETTER/JOURNAL

The Good Life
By CLAIRE SHEFF KOHN

  Claire Sheff-Kohn
 

Claire Sheff-Kohn
Senior Associate and Mentor

Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.

—Viktor Frankl

As I approached retirement, I did what I often do at times of transition: I bought a book. (I believe in the power of what I call biblio-therapy.) In this case, I was walking through my favorite bookstore when Repacking Your Bags: Lighten Your Load for the Rest of Your Life, by Richard Leider and David Shapiro, caught my eye. Having been in education for forty years, I was concerned that the end of my career, to which I had dedicated the majority of my life, would leave me feeling adrift and purposeless. This book offered a means for taking stock and maybe even reinventing myself.

As I dived into the book, the authors offered a formula for living what they referred to as “the Good Life”; they promised to provide “A Simple Formula for What’s Not So Simple: Living in the Place You Belong, with the People You Love, Doing the Right Work, on Purpose.” The “on purpose” part caught my attention. Much of the first half of my life often seemed more accidental than “on purpose,” and I hoped to reevaluate my life before entering retirement and, in doing so, to find new or renewed purpose and meaning for the next leg of my journey.

As it turns out, Richard Leider is considered one of the foremost researchers, writers, and coaches on finding purpose in one’s life. He assists people with their quest to identify their reason for being or, as he puts it, “their reason for getting up in the morning.” Leider says, “Purpose can add not only years to your life but life to your years.”

I have seen this firsthand with three of my friends/relatives who range in age from 85 to 91. The one who is most fulfilled and happy has numerous reasons for getting out of bed in the morning—contact with family and socializing with friends (especially the new “young ones” in their fifties and sixties whom she has “adopted”), writing the poetry she shares with the members of a writing group she joined, dancing for an hour each day to swing music while watching what’s going on outside her living room window, just to name a few. The others spend their time primarily watching TV, reading the newspaper, and involved in other solitary pursuits that pass the time but bring little satisfaction.

A recent study came to the same conclusion about the importance of purpose. Using Leider’s landmark book, The Power of Purpose, and his methodology for coaching people to identify what holds meaning for them, MetLife’s research organization, Mature Market Institute (MMI), developed a model to research the role played by purpose in people’s lives. (MMI looks at issues of aging and longevity.) The results of their study are contained in the report, “Discovering What Matters: Balancing Money, Medicine, and Meaning,” available online at www.MatureMarketInstitute.com. In summary, here are their major findings:

  • People define “the Good Life” as “being healthy, having financial freedom, and having the time to do what’s important to them.”
  • Purpose matters regardless of age, gender, financial status, or life stage.
  • The majority of people assign the most importance to Meaning-related activities and, above all else, spending time with family and friends.
  • People with a sense of purpose were more likely to report being happy and to describe themselves as having the Good Life.
        Carl Rogers said, “The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.” So with the help of Leider’s work, I am in “the process” of reexamining what provides purpose and meaning for me at this stage of my life. Leider believes that taking stock annually of one’s purpose is as important as getting one’s yearly physical exam. He has developed a checklist that can be accessed at www.richardleider.com/pdf/AnnualCheck.pdf. It offers a starting point for thinking about what it takes to live the Good Life. 


Center for Empowered Leadership ®
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