Renewalment – Thriving in Retirement: Building on a Rock-Solid Foundation of Biblical Principles With Bruce Fear
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Summary:
[117] – Who wouldn’t want to thrive in retirement?
In this episode, Jeremy Keil speaks with Bruce Fear about renewalment in retirement. Bruce discusses how retirement is the time to renew yourself, referencing his book, Renewalment – Thriving in Retirement: Building on a Rock-Solid Foundation of Biblical Principles. Jeremy and Bruce unpack what “Renewalment” means, what it looks like, and how you can refocus and repurpose yourself to make retirement the best years of your life.
Bruce discusses:
- What renewalment means with regards to retirement, and what renewalment looks like for him
- Why refocusing and repurposing are important steps during retirement to make them the best years of your life
- How you can find your focus and purpose at any time in your life, not only in retirement
- What the rock-solid foundation of biblical principles that apply to retirement are
- And more
Renewalment – Thriving in Retirement: Building on a Rock-Solid Foundation of Biblical Principles
Renewalment
Many people retire because they become tired. Renewalment is about renewing, refocusing, and repurposing a life stage.
It doesn’t have to happen only when you retire; it can happen at any life phase.
Bruce Fear joins us in this episode to talk about his book, Renewalment – Thriving in Retirement: Building on a Rock-Solid Foundation of Biblical Principles, and share his personal retirement experience.
For Bruce, renewalment came when he realized enough was enough. Money plays a role in retirement, but so do your ego and prestige. Bruce realized that he had served and focused on his ego, prestige, and money enough, and decided it was time to refocus when he retired.
A lot of the time, your self-worth gets wrapped up in your work and your ability to have an influence at work, but at some point, you have to realize it’s time to refocus and repurpose what’s important to you outside of work.
Refocusing and Repurposing
When it comes to renewing yourself for retirement, you need to refocus and repurpose.
Well, what does that mean?
When it’s time to say enough is enough, we need to shift our focus from being self-centered to being other-centered.
While doing things that feel good – making a difference, helping people out, being a big influence at work – it’s centered around yourself. It makes you feel good.
We want to refocus ourselves and flip that around to focus on an other-centered person’s perspective. It’s not about me, it’s about other people. It’s an emotional and spiritual experience to take a step back and look at it from someone else’s viewpoint.
There will be ups and downs, but by maintaining a steady, rock-solid foundation where you’re grounded in something, you’ll have less severe highs and lows, and the ability to meet more challenges with a greater sense of purpose.
You experienced being a helper, creator, and an influence at work, achieved prestige, and boosted your ego, and now it is time to refocus, repurpose and renew yourself.
Don’t retire because you’re tired – tired of your job, tired of getting up every morning and going to work, tired of driving – retire because you have found a new focus and purpose.
Thriving In Retirement
When Bruce began researching people in retirement, he saw a lot of disillusioned and upset people who were losing their sense of purpose and identity, essentially becoming a lesser part of themselves.
When you retire, you don’t want to retire from something and lose yourself or your sense of purpose.
You want to retire into something. Retire with a renewed sense of self, a new purpose, and a new focus.
Think about all the experiences you’ve had, all the ups and downs, no matter who you are or what you’ve done. There’s so much you can do to be other-centered and help people for their reason. And the outcome of that is you find more personal joy, peace, purpose, and contentment than when you try to make it about you.
Bruce has his own coaching consultancy as a life coach and says most people have settled for living a less-than-full life, retiring to escape from something rather than move towards achieving and fulfilling something new.
We want to live our life to the fullest. No matter what age or stage you’re in, you’ll want to look to clarify your identity, purpose, and how to live your life to the fullest.
Create a Pausing Point
Pause and be intentional.
Retirement is kind of a forced pause where you have to stop and think about your goals, purpose, and life, but how can you plan for a pause if you’re not in that transition period yet?
Bruce’s advice is to be intentional about it. Prioritize it. Make pausing and reflecting a habit.
Our habits win. Our old habits always win over our good intentions and goals unless we prioritize them and stop making excuses. Habits can lead you astray if you’re not intentional about the positive changes you want to make.
For example, start with 5 or 10 minutes a day and grow to 30 minutes, where you take an intentional pause and ask yourself what is really going right with your life. What is really going wrong? What’s missing? What are you confused about? Use these questions to reflect upon your life and help guide you in the right direction.
Be intentional about it, and don’t let your old habits win.
Rock-Solid Foundation of Biblical Principles
The Bible may not talk about retirement from 2000 or 4000 years ago, but despite retirement being a relatively new concept, there are principles from the Bible that can be applied to creating a solid foundation.
Today’s view of retirement is retiring to a life of self-centered leisure.
The Bible mentions retirement once – working as a levitical priest from the age of 20 to 50. Once a levitical priest turns 50, they retire to serve others and allow room for the young priests to come in.
So, we need to apply that to our own life and retirement experience.
Work is good, but too much of it becomes a problem.
We want to retire to a new stage of our life to make room for others to fulfill our previous roles.
We want to live a life of provision, contentment, and enjoyment. It’s difficult to enjoy retirement renewalment without a healthy relationship with money because money will always be there, it’s a part of life, but it shouldn’t be our main priority or focus.
And so, it’s important to work with a financial advisor who understands those principles, provision, contentment, and enjoyment, while planning your retirement with you to create a rock-solid foundation that encompasses both your financial needs and your renewed purpose and focus.
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To learn more about renewalment, check out the resources below!
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us or our guest Bruce Fear using the contact information provided below!
Resources:
- Renewalment – Thriving in Retirement: Building on a Rock-Solid Foundation of Biblical Principles by Bruce Fear, Kindle
- Renewalment – Thriving in Retirement: Building on a Rock-Solid Foundation of Biblical Principles by Bruce Fear, Paperback
- Free Retirement Planning Video Course: 5stepretirementplan.com
- 3 Things You Should Know Before Choosing A Financial Advisor
- 7 Questions That Could Make or Break Your Retirement
- Subscribe to Retirement Revealed on Google Podcasts
- Subscribe to Retirement Revealed on Apple Podcasts
Connect With Bruce Fear:
Connect With Jeremy Keil:
- Jeremy@keilfp.com
- Keil Financial Partners
- LinkedIn: Jeremy Keil
- Facebook: Jeremy Keil
- LinkedIn: Keil Financial Partners
- Book a call with Jeremy
About Our Guest:
Bruce Fear was with Thrivent Financial for over 30 years and started as a rep in northwest Iowa in wealth advisory. Throughout his time with Thrivent, he worked through 14 different roles in corporate and in the field before becoming senior in leadership for a couple of decades. He then founded 2 companies of his own before retiring.
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