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Episode #509 - Wisdom For Our Children: Family and Friends

Roger: "Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims

Well, hey there, welcome to the Retirement Answer Man show. Roger Whitney here. This show is all in on you not just surviving retirement but having the confidence to lean in and rock retirement, regardless of what's going on in the world.

We're going to have an abbreviated show today. We're going to have our segment on wisdom for our children around family and friends and share some wisdom that we've collected from a lot of you listeners, as well as rock retirement club members.

By the way, we are putting together a document with all of the input from you and others on the categories that we're talking about. It's going to be a PDF document that you can use for some helpful hints and maybe you can give to someone you love. If you want to get a copy of that, you'll receive it via our 6-Shot Saturday email, which comes out every Saturday, which is a summary of the show and where we're able to share documents and links, et cetera. You can sign up for that. If you don't already get it at 6shotsaturday.com. Next week we'll finish this series, but we'll also get back to answering some of your questions.

Before we get to our main segment, I would like to invite you to join me next week October 26th or the 28th for a live meetup online where I'm going to teach a little bit on the four pillars that I think you want to have in place to have a retirement plan of record that you can have confidence in.

In addition to that, we are opening up the rock retirement club for enrollment. We're bringing in our next cohort and I would like to invite you to join where we've gathered everything you need to walk through step by step building your retirement plan of record with the support and the encouragement from not just the coaches, but the members as well.

A recent comment from a member in the clubhouse says,

"Hey, I just completed the masterclass, and I learned so much along the way and feel more confident moving into the next stage of life. I joined the club to learn about the financial side of retirement, since I've always been pretty in touch with the soft side.

But lesson after lesson, the RRC has made me stop and think. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the work the RRC team does and has done to help us move more competently into retirement."

You can go to livewithroger.com and join me next Thursday or Saturday to hang out and take a little baby step to work on putting a retirement plan in place that you can have confidence in.

PRACTICAL PLANNING SEGMENT

All right, in today's segment, we're going to talk about wisdom around family and friends, things we wish our younger self would have known, and things we would like to impart on our children to maybe help them on their journey, and to help me is a very exhausted Nichole "Rockstar" Mills. Hey, Nichole.

Nichole: Hello. How are you doing? How is your exhaustion level?

Roger: For those of you that don't know we're actually recording this on Monday. That's why it's late. Sorry about that. We just finished yesterday. The RRC roundup, which is our annual conference. For the rock retirement club, and we had over 200 people come to Fort Worth from all over the country, actually from all over the world. There was a gentleman there from Thailand.

Nichole: I was going to say, I met a couple of people that were visiting internationally.

Roger: For three days of discussion around very geeky topics and very non geeky topics and the energy in the room and the enthusiasm and the love and the wisdom. It was exhausting. It was enriching and exhausting at the same time.

I haven't really processed it. We definitely have found our people, Nichole. They're wonderful.

Nichole: It was an amazing weekend.

Roger: Yeah. So, I encourage you and I encourage you to encourage your children. They need to find their people to their cohort to walk with in certain areas of life. It can make all the difference because it's hard to have kind, intentional conversations just with the general network of friends. It's good to find people out in the same season of life. I did learn something Nichole is that we need to change the name of the show.

Nichole: Really?

Roger: Yeah, to the Retirement Answer Young Woman Show.

Nichole: Who's the young woman?

Roger: I don't know how many times I heard it. Oh, I'm so glad Nichole's on the show. Cause you were on last week.

Nichole: Yes, it was very sweet. It was nice of everyone to make those comments.

Roger: May have to ban you. I don't want to be outshined by your rising star.

All right. So, we're going to talk about some wisdom around family and friends.

We had some comments from listeners, but most of the comments we got were around careers. Mindset and money for sure, which is next week. So that's going to be a lot of stuff because this is a technically a retirement planning show, I guess. So, I'm going to share an accumulation of observations I've had that were gleaned from obviously my reading and life experience, but also members and conversations that I've had that I just sort of have paid attention to.

The first one is the quote that I had at the beginning of the show, which is usually heard as, what you do speak so loudly, I cannot hear what you say, and it's interesting how these quotes get morphed. When you hear that, Nichole, I'm sure you've heard that one before, what do you think that means?

Nichole: Believe what people do over what they say, like take their actions to be the true indicator of their intentions and personality.

Roger: Exactly. I think that's it. We tend to want to listen to the words, even if they're not congruent with everything they're doing. It's amazing how if we just follow that rule, we can understand who are safe people and who aren't.

I was thinking of, well, we had Jim Sonier from the Retirement in IRA show, he wasn't saying they're doing anything. I didn't really know Jim that well, but when I meet people, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I didn't know Jim. And I always try to watch them to see what their agenda is. Are they a safe person?

That's the way I frame it. I definitely learned this weekend, spending a lot of time and having lunch with them afterwards with Jim. They're awesome. They're totally legit and authentic people, and you're like, oh, wow, I love this person. Okay. I'm going to collect this guy. He's my buddy now. I'm not going to let him go.

Another general lesson around family and friends. I think when it comes to relationships your most important relationship is with yourself, and I learned later in life in my 40s that I am the one responsible for my happiness. I'm actually an independent person and like when I got married in my 20s, I never really lived by myself.

I was with friends. I was with my family, and then I went to college. I was with friends and then I got married. I never lived independently. So I unintentionally got into looking for, in this case, say my spouse to, she's the one that needs to make me happy and if I'm not feeling happy, what is she doing wrong?

It was in my forties. I finally realized. It's me, I'm an independent person and I'm responsible for how I react to things and my happiness and my well being and when I finally flipped that switch, Nichole, I became such a better husband in my own self-evaluation anyway.

Nichole: I need to ask Shauna and verify that.

Roger: This natural codependency thing, the more you can be happy with yourself the more you have to give rather than looking at what people can give to you. So that's something I wish I would have known a lot earlier.

Nichole: I was very fortunate in that I watched a lot of VH1 growing up and so I learned from RuPaul that if you don't learn to love yourself, then are you going to love somebody else?

Roger: That is a reference that nobody on the scene will know. Don't Google it. You don't need to Google it. Just trust her.

All right. Love. How do you love someone? How should you be loved? That's like a huge question.

Nichole: That's going to take probably more than one podcast to really dive into that.

Roger: Well, and who am I to say, right?

I'm trying to figure it out like you and everybody else. Here are my thoughts, and you're welcome to comment or amend them, Nichole, or add to them.

First, Aristotle, let's go back to the OGs of thinking.

"We live in deeds, not years, in thoughts, not breaths, in feelings, not figures on a dial. We should count time by heartthrobs."

Oh, that was sweet. I like that. I don't think of Aristotle as sweet most of the time, but that was sweet.

My thought on love number two is attention. I grew up when parenting was about quality time. Right? I wasn't, in this case, my single working mom, and it was about, you had limited time, so it needs to be quality time.

I think that's pretty much blown up. I think that is actually very incorrect. I don't think you can manufacture quality time. I think love is expressed by attention. It's quantity. You have to have quantity of time. You have to be present because the quality will come out randomly in all of the mundane moments.

So, it's all about quantity and consistency of time.

Here's a good example. That's one reason why I love road trips is because road trips, you're in the car, let's say for 15 hours. Most of it is boredom. Yeah. You're listening to the radio, maybe the kids are watching something or your spouses. On the internet, but then randomly something will happen. Well, there'll be a little bit of a deeper conversation, or something said or something seen, and you can't predict when they're going to happen. What I found was those kinds of trips, whether it was with friends or family. These random things come out that I remember that made the whole trip for me and they're likely different for the person or the people that I'm with.

Nichole: I agree with you to an extent. I think you know that I do this. Like, since I have three kids, I do carve out once a month, I take the older boys on a one on one. I call them mom dates and I spend like an afternoon just one on one with each son. I guess that is a little bit of manufactured quality time.

But I also like knowing that as they get into their teenage years, they can count on having that alone time with me. If they ever need it to tell me something, maybe they don't want their brothers to know.

Roger: I think that can fit into it. I think that is wonderful that you do that. It's in creating these rituals.

I know people that like on the fives, whenever someone turns five or 10, they'll take one of their children on a trip that that child gets to choose what the experience is. We never created those kinds of rituals or traditions, so I think it's a wonderful tradition.

Nichole: Thanks.

Roger: You don't need my judgment, but I think you're right to carve this time out.

Attention is what we want. We want to be seen.

Nichole: You're right. It's attention. It's that I turn my phone off. I make them the sole focus. Obviously, I try to get them attention other times too, but that one on one time.

Roger: That's going to go to the same with a spouse. Or coworkers in the roundup.

Nichole: Absolutely.

Roger: Everybody knew me. That's how they came into the club is generally the podcast. And I tried to be very intentional when someone was talking to me that I was just focused on them with all the craziness going on. I think that's important. We want to be seen. We should be seen.

Encouragement in the sense of we need to be cheerleaders for people.

I think that's a pit of wit. We need to be everyone's cheerleader. Now that can sound. Like blind support. Like, I'm your cheerleader. I think you're my cheerleader. And our team, we're all cheerleaders for each other. That doesn't mean that we don't call each other out. We hold everybody to a higher standard.

We have expectations of each other, but we want the best for each other. I think that's a way of expressing love and how you should treat friends. They want the best for you. Anything else in the love category? Do we have those all figured out? Did we miss anything?

Nichole: Something that you say a lot, I guess, that sort of dovetails with this would be to always assume the best intentions by someone else.

I mean, you say it like just in general, always assume people are doing their best and have good intentions, but I feel like particularly, like with your family and friends, to give them that benefit of the doubt. Is important and something that I feel like that I would like to throw out there for like the marriage part is remember that you're on the same team and sometimes there's just a lot and it's not fun and it's a slog and it's just, you know. But You're on the same team.

You get through it together, and I think that that's an important thing to remember during the difficult times.

Roger: Assuming that everybody wants the best for you is a good starting point. Doesn't mean you're going to let people run over you.

Nichole: Right. Absolutely.

Roger: In the journey of doing the podcast, that's really where I got to that point because we started to get emails, random emails from people that we've never met and 99 percent of them are wonderful with questions or encouragement or constructive feedback, but there's other 1 percent that don't know how to communicate what they're trying to say in a positive way. How's that for framing?

Just like there's the person that flips you off in the car or cuts in line at the grocery store or whatever, some people are just dealing with their own issues that you don't know anything about, or they don't know how to communicate. Just looking for what they are actually trying to tell me around all of this negativity.

Maybe they're trying to tell me something in the feedback we get, anyway. I'll try to find that little nugget if I can. Sometimes you can't and then ignore all the horrible way that they went about doing it. That's hard to do. I know you get much more upset about emails than I do not that we get a lot.

Nichole: It's hard. I think highly of you, and I think they should too.

Roger: That's why I love you, but this goes the same. I was trying to look for the quote, maybe you'll remember it Nichole, it's hard to remember that when we interact with people, it could be a loved one or someone random in the grocery store is they're all going through a struggle that we know nothing about, right?

Nichole: That's absolutely true. You don't know what happened prior to you running to that grumpy person at the grocery store. Maybe they got terrible life news.

Roger: You just don't know, and so, if they happen to say something. Mean or flip you off in the car or whatever. It's like they could be going through something you don't know. It's actually very enriching just to have grace and actually wish them well. That's actually a Phil Stutz tool is when you get, when there's conflict is like, try to literally, I don't know if this just send them love actually enriches you as well. Read the Phil Stutz book tools if you want to learn more about that, but it actually works.

When it comes to friends. Let's start with friends, since we're there.

This sounds odd, but I try to collect wonderful people. Like I said, Jim, I've added it to my collection. Jim Sonier, because we had never met before. Jim, you are in my collection. I just put you on the shelf. You're wonderful.

You do it authentically, but I want to be around amazing people.

I think that's a wonderful piece of wisdom, that we should have high standards for who we allow into our life.

Nichole: I agree with that.

Roger: Then say yes to them, nurture them, and check in with them, which can require using a target like heroic or on paper because it's easy when we get busy. Be intentional about it.

Rajib, who you know, is the master at this. And I wrote about him. I think I used his example in the book where he has the most robust, authentic network and it has served him personally and professionally for decades. He's at a CEO level in major companies but he still checks in with the lady who ran the kitchen in the Marriott that he would commute to 10, 15 years ago.

It's authentic. It's not just simply from a strategic let's get network standpoint. He just loves great people, and he checks in on them. I think that's a great thing to do. I'm not near as intentional about it. I should be, but unintentionally, but wonderfully that's what we felt this weekend. I mean, everybody in that club. They're part of my collection. They're wonderful people and I would do anything with any one of them. I think that's a really good way of thinking about your friends.

Conversely, have boundaries. If you want to see where you're going in life, see who you're hanging out with. Take a good look at where you're hanging out and look at what the trajectory of their life looks like to you from a mindset standpoint, from a career standpoint, from a love standpoint, that's probably where you're going to be going. So, we should have very high standards with who we allow in our life.

Doesn't mean you exclude people that you love but are struggling. You can be a guide as much as they're willing to let you in.

Caught you just looking at me, Nichole, you can't see her, but she's just looking at me.

Nichole: I'm listening.

Roger: Mark Ross, who you all know from the show, came up to me,

"Roger, I see what you mean by Nichole's expressions."

Nichole: You have my undivided attention!

Roger: No, no, no, your expression right now is neutral, which is nice.

But for those of you who have not met Nichole or haven't seen her on one of the roundups, she lets you know what she's feeling by her face and it's funny. Sometimes you can overread it, but that's a good thing.

I had to learn that for myself. This is another thing from family and friends. I'll just throw it in there. I literally had to practice; I don't know how many years it took me to naturally have a pleasant face.

Nichole: Oh no.

Roger: Because I had resting grumpy face big time and even when I get into thinking mode, I get grumpy face because I'm intense and I'm thinking. I'm inward. I would walk around that way and people would think what the heck's wrong with him.

Nichole: Yeah.

Roger: When I finally realized I got it, it was in a Firestone tire store in Franklin, Tennessee. I was driving to Franklin. I got a flat. I put the spare on and I had to drive and get a brand new tire. I was standing there waiting like you do and a gentleman came up to me and said, "You have a very pleasant face." Just randomly, when I was thinking and just in my own world and I'm like, that was like, okay, I figured it out. So, from a friends and family standpoint, make sure you have a pleasant face.

Okay, family. I mean, we're not therapists. We're just fellow travelers along with you.

When I think of family, I think of two different families. You have your FOO, which is your family of origin. Anybody that's been in coaching or therapy knows that.

That's your parents and your siblings, the key here with family, and this goes with friends as well, is boundaries and really, I think a lot of wisdom and we have a decent list of books and resources.

Boundaries are the biggest struggle here of where your life begins and where there's don’t, or anybody else's doesn't.

One of my coaches says, think of a hula hoop. You have a hula hoop around you. No one's allowed in that hula hoop. Those are your boundaries and with family of origin, especially the concept of that doesn't work for me or how to say no to protect yourself is one of those things we have to learn, and we'll have some books that you can suggest or read for yourself.

That's all I'm going to say because I'm not an expert on any of this stuff. And then you have the family you choose. Your spouse. They're separate from you, they share your values, they should be somebody that is your biggest cheerleader but will call you on your stuff but is your biggest cheerleader.

Someone that enriches you and someone that will speak truth with love.

Nichole: And you like them.

Roger: Yeah. They're your best buddy.

Shauna is my best buddy.

Nichole: That's an important, important qualification there.

Roger: Let's stop pontificating on Roger's thoughts at 56 and Nichole's. I think we have a few suggestions from listeners, or from listeners and Our RC members.

Nichole: We do. I feel like this one is pretty relationship-y. So, I'm going to throw it in there.

Mark wrote in,

"Take time to have memorable experiences. Investment in future memories is priceless. It sounds like a credit card commercial, but seriously, I still remember the look on my kids’ faces when they saw Disney world for the first time."

Roger: When I heard you read that. I thought of the concept of time. We think of our life as linear, where we have a line that just continues on and there's time for things, and another book, I didn't even put this on the list, which is 4, 000 weeks is it's not actually a line. Your life isn't a line. It's a series of dots and each one of those dots is a moment. And I think we've talked about that before. That's what Mark's comment made me think of.

Nichole: Our next one is from Paul who wrote in,

"Regarding relationships, never belittle your spouse in front of friends, family, or children."

that's a really good one. I really like that. Make sure you speak positively of them. Then he also says,

"Be grateful to your spouse for everything they do for or with you. Your spouse is God's gift to you. Never take her him for granted."

Roger: Amen to that. Amen to that.

Nichole: Okay, so Megan has a brilliant idea. She said, "

When our kids were contemplating a serious relationship slash marriage, we told them to plan a camping trip together, preferably in a hard to get to location with marginal weather or take a trip with complicated logistics.

Difficult travel is a great test of character and compatibility. While they all planned trips with their significance before marriage, only one ticked the original boxes. All are still married and travel as much as possible."

Roger: I like that one a lot. It makes me think of adventure racing.

I did a few longer adventure races, like 12 hours plus adventure races, where you have to navigate, and you're usually your team of three or four. You're orienteering in the woods and everything else. That's what happens with all that initial enthusiasm when you're in it and it just strips away and you really see who people are, and then team dynamics become everything.

So that's a beautiful one. I love that one.

Here's one from Jay and I love this one because I love who he references, which is Mr. Rogers.

" Look for the helpers. There are always helpers. Value them and be one."

Mic drop there, man. That's a good one.

Nichole: This, I think, goes back to a little bit of what you were talking about earlier with Phil Stutz.

Lisa says,

"Never withhold love no matter the situation. Forgiveness is a gift that you give to yourself."

Roger: I love that. I love that. Do you have any others?

Nichole: I'm skimming here.

Roger: No doubt by doing all of this we're going to get more emails with some suggestions. So, we'll work on incorporating those in.

Nichole:

They might listen to us and be like, actually guys, y'all have it all wrong.

Roger: Hey, if I need to learn, you come tell me.

I'll tell you the ones I think everybody should read. And if you have a book, I don't know if Gretchen wrote a book, I'm sure you'd want to throw that in here.

Nichole: Oh, ha ha.

Roger: Nichole is a Gretchen Rubin fangirl, right?

Nichole: It's true. Yes.

Roger: Yes. First book. Everybody should read this book multiple times. QBQ, the question behind the question by John Miller. It is one of those books everybody should read.

The second book is The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi. I actually think everybody should read this book. It's by two Japanese authors, because it's on Adlerian psychology, and there's an expert in that in Japan, and then there's the translator. It's written in an interesting way. In that it's a professor and the student. Definitely one everybody should read.

The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz.

The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath.

Then this next one is, everybody should read it, Love Does by Bob Goff.

Nichole: Oh, that's a good one, yeah.

Roger: Yeah. Another one that everybody should read maybe multiple times, Necessary Endings. By Dr. Henry Cloud.

Another book that maybe everybody should read, it was written there a long time ago, I bet you could be refreshed, is called Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Robert Townsend. Those last three are a Christian-based and I'm Christian, and Boundaries was very heavily Christian-based, so just FYI.

Nichole: I'm blanking on her name, but the lady that originated the Whole 30 Diet also wrote a newer book that's on boundaries that is not quite as religious. I did not personally care for that one, but it is an option.

Roger: Then the Crucial series. There's Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, Crucial Accountability.

It's a series written by Kerry Peterson and Joseph Grenny, a three-part series.

All of these books will give you or your children some frameworks for how to navigate relationships, and ending things, and starting things, and expressing things. I think The Power of Moments, it's a long book, you could probably read an abstract or summary of it and get what you need out of it, which is essentially trying to put an exclamation point. There are moments in everyone's life when something special happens with a little bit of intention, you can put an exclamation point on it, but also when things are low and you're paying attention. You can fill in the gap a little bit and help them whatever rut they're going through.

Nichole: Is that the end of your list?

Roger: That's the end of my list.

Nichole: So, I was surprised that you didn't hear one. I feel like everyone's read this, maybe not, but The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman is another one that I think is really good for relationships because it identifies different ways that people express and that they like to receive love.

I at least had never really thought about that until I read the book. And then it's like, oh yeah, some people, like words of praise are very meaningful to them, and that isn't my love language. So, I had to get better about thinking about using that with people who that is their love language. So, it's kind of a cool read and it's not very long.

Roger: Yeah. I don't think I've ever read that. I don't think I've ever read that. I'll have to check it out.

Nichole: Yeah.

Roger: With that, let's go to our smart sprint.

TODAY'S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT

On your marks, get set,

and we're off to set a little baby step we can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock life.

All right. In the next seven days. When someone comes to mind chicken and I'm sending them a text, make a call and just see how they're doing.

No agenda.

Nichole: Are you recording right now?

Roger: We are.

Nichole: Oh, all right.

Roger: You can tell we're tired. You get the gist.

Nichole: Sorry, everyone. Mashed potato brain over here. I'm tired.

CONCLUSION

Thank you so much for hanging out with Nichole and I today. We are exhausted. We'll be energized and rested for next week when we're going to talk about wisdom for our children around money saving and investing, and we'll have lots of tips and hopefully frameworks that you can pass on to those in your life that you love.

The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance references are historical and do not guarantee future results. All indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly. Make sure you consult your legal, tax, or financial advisor before making any decisions.