Can you retire your EGO?

Phil Goldsmith  has had more careers than anyone I know -- lawyer, journalist, deputy mayor,  bank executive, head hunter. He also ran  Fairmount Park, the Philadelphia School District, and as managing director, ran the city itself. Between some of those gigs, he wrote a book, took up drumming, trained as a spinning instructor, and tried his hand at art.
You might say the man craves challenges.
Now that Phil has left full-time work,  he says he's facing his biggest challenge ever -- to try to figure out what he really wants to do rather than do the things that help him feel important.

 

                       "Am I doing that because it's good for my ego?" --Phil Goldsmith
"When I first left the city in 2005, anything that came my way I agreed to do. So before  I knew it, I was on  7 or 8 boards. And that was just to fill my time and to make me feel important because I no longer had the importance of title. So you find other ways to feel important or find meaning.  And after a while you spread yourself too thin and you start to question whether

All about Nothing

 I love what Hal Kessler of Elkins Park wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer this week. Here it is:

“A woman comes home from work and says to her husband, who is retired, ‘What did you do today?’

‘Nothing,’ he replies.

His wife then raises her voice and says, ‘Damn it, you did nothing yesterday.’

He replies, ‘I know. I wasn’t finished.’

After 52 years of work, I have learned to do nothing. I submit that doing nothing in my case, is a major breakthrough. I thoroughly enjoy doing nothing and view 2012 as an opportunity to continue to do nothing.”

I found Hal doing nothing this afternoon, and he had time to explain why he’s having so much fun.

For 38 years, until 1992, he worked as a teacher and later director of curriculum for the Philadelphia School District. For the next 11, he ran the World Affairs Council’s  Pew-funded project-- Schools of Excellence. Next, he was education director for the HolocaustAwareness Museum  in Northeast Philadelphia.

During much of this time, he said, he actually worked 3 or 4 jobs, -- teaching in the evening, writing reports for a management psychology firm and teaching at Chestnut Hill College.

“One day I said to myself, ‘This is a bit crazy!’ and I cut down to two jobs.”

Now, Hal, 79,  says, “I find I love just not having to watch the clock, though my alarm still goes off at 5 a.m. I have a leisurely breakfast and chart out the day. I have time for my two grandsons, 8 and 9,  and reading and golf.

“I call it nothing because I don’t have a job. That makes it nothing. I do what I want to do. That’s why I’m finding this retirement so great. I don’t have a job, no one to report to, no deadlines to meet.”

I can’t see my way to "nothing" yet.  As my friend, Art Carey, told me today, citing psychologist Martin Seligman, “We need a sense of engagement, of accomplishment. When you leave a career, you leave a source of those things. And then there’s routine. So we need a way to replace those things.”

Hal Kessler would disagree.