Eric Sundstrom - My Next Phase: The Personality-Based Guide to Your Best Retirement

Copyright 2007 by My Next Phase, LLC

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Hachette Book Group

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New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

First eBook Edition: September 2007

ISBN: 978-0-446-40545-4

To Mary, Linda, and Liz

W E OWE A DEBT OF GRATITUDE TO MANY PEOPLE WHO HELPED with this project. We thank Debra Fulghum Bruce for ably assisting with the writing. We are grateful to Michelle Howry, our editor, for expertly shaping the manuscript; to Karen Murgolo, editorial director, for leading the project; and to the team at Springboard Press for producing the book. We appreciate the guidance of our literary agent, Denise Marcil; and valuable suggestions from our partners, Rob Bratskeir, of My Next Phase, LLC, and Trace Hallowell, of Tactical Magic in Memphis. We are grateful to Ben Johnson and Brian Borgman at Tactical Magic for the graphic art, and to Jack Medoff for the wonderful cartoons he drew especially for this book.

We thank the many individuals whose stories we have retoldwith new names and locations to keep their identities private. Most we reconstructed as composites of two or more individuals known to members of the writing team.

For help in developing and managing the Web site, www.MyNextPhase.com, we thank Bryan Owen, Brian Williams, and the team at Viget Labs in Falls Church, Virginia. For participation and assistance in developing the process for our business, we thank Mary Burnham, Candace Clinger, Ann Ford, Sylvi Horvath, Carla Ivison, Beth Mayfield, Bob Perry, Susan Pohl, Charlie Shott, and Marty Yellin.

We greatly appreciate the encouragement, faith, and emotional support from many of those close to us, including Beth Sundstrom (mother of one of us); Dr. Rhoda K. Burnham (mother of two of us); friends John Hooper, Sid Baker, and Irwin Sollinger for their wise counsel; Gini Courter, Denny and Jerry Davidoff, Allan Weiman, Don Iron, Ralph Adams, Stu Tobin, Jeff Klomberg, Jack Raineault, and Tim Crager for their caring support; and the members of the Unitarian Church in Westport, Connecticut, for their fellowship.

We thank our childrenTed Burnham, Anna Burnham, Gregory Burnham, Spencer Burnham, Alexander Sundstrom, and Claire Sundstromfor their faith in their fathers. We thank our wives, Liz Harris, Linda Hudson, and Mary Sundstromto whom we dedicate this bookfor their skepticism, counsel, patience, and love. We have gained much in creating www.MyNextPhase.com. We hope this book helps you find fulfillment in the Next Phase of your life.

My Next Phase, LLC

353 Colonial Road

Memphis, Tennessee 38117

www.MyNextPhase.com

What Is My Next Phase?

T HE FACT THAT YOU ARE READING THIS BOOK SUGGESTS THAT YOU might be thinking about retirement. You arent alone! The number of Americans fifty-five and older will almost double between now and 2030from 60 million today to more than 107 million in 2030as the boomer generation ages. Retirement once meant a few years of rest and relaxation. Today, in this age of modern medicine, Americans who reach sixty-five can expect to live an average of nineteen more years. By the year 2050, an estimated 40 percent of sixty-five-year-olds will reach age ninety.

So what will you do in your years of retirementor what we call the Next Phase of life? Maybe youd like to leave your nine-to-five job for a life without deadlines. Perhaps your financial planner says you have all the money you need, and you can afford to hike the Himalayas, write the Great American Novel... or do nothing at all. And how will this new stage of life affect you emotionally? After all, no matter how much you want to quit your job, it likely gives you fulfillment beyond the satisfaction of a regular paycheck. While financial preparation is important, planning for the emotional side of your Next Phase ultimately determines the success of your retirement.

This book and our interactive Web site, www.MyNextPhase.com, both grew out of a personal quest that began in 1999, when founder and CEO Michael Burnham sold a successful family business. With money no longer a primary concern, and uncertain of what he wanted to do next in life, Michael, a CPA with years of experience in business and marketing, searched for a book or program to give him guidance. Finding none, Michael sought help from organizational psychologist Eric Sundstrom, PhD (Michaels executive coach), and clinical psychologist Dr. Randy Burnham (Michaels brother). Eric, a professor at the University of Tennessee and a private consultant, specializes in organizational development, executive coaching, and personality assessment. Over the past thirty years, he has designed and conducted employee attitude surveys, training, and assessments for multinational companies such as AT&T, Exxon USA, Lockheed-Martin, M&M/Mars, and PepsiCo. Randy has run a private practice as a clinical psychologist for thirty years and has served as a trainer and professor at Northern Michigan University, Purdue University, and other institutions.

Together we found plenty of resources on financial planning for retirementbut we turned up nothing that offered practical assistance in figuring out what to do next in life. So the three of us decided to start a business offering personal guidance in planning for life after retirementnonfinancial planningfrom a Web site. We named it My Next Phase.

Over the next few years, we questioned hundreds of people nearing or past the age of retirement. Their experiences ran the gamut from depressed to delighted. Their transitions to new phases ranged from smooth and comfortable to stressful and traumatic. Our own experience led us to look closely at individual differences. Eventually we reached this key insight: success in retirement comes from self-understanding. Those who become aware of their personalities can plan effectively for emotional fulfillment in retirement. Those who dont make plans that suit their personalities risk failing at retirement.

Once we grasped the fundamental importance of personality, we began building a personality-based approach to guiding people through the transition to retirement. After much trial and error and many revisions, we devised an innovative step-by-step, patent-pending process for creating a personal plan for a satisfying future.

In this book well help you understand yourself and what you want for your future. We offer a series of quizzes on the seven personality traits most critical to your success in retirement. We provide exercises to assist you in gauging the amount of change in your life, discovering what has given you fulfillment in your career, identifying emotional blind spots that might lead you to fail at retirement, and using your personal style to smooth your way to a plan for your best retirement. We guide you in identifying, exploring, and selecting options; converting your best options into the ingredients of a fulfilling future; and creating a plan to test-drive your Next Phase.

We will guide you in examining your life, perhaps as you never have before. Some of what you learn about yourself here will confirm what you already know. Some may prove so revealing that it could profoundly change the way you see your future.

We believe that retirement is similar to navigating a challenging river. A few retirees may succeed by chance. However, the great majority will experience unnecessary difficulty because they set out unprepared. Some will be unsuccessful and drown in anxiety, boredom, or weariness.