#156 – DARE to Discover Your Purpose with George Jerjian

Yeah, but that was the catalyst. That’s what kicked off my change of mind, my change of perspective on life. I, like everybody else, was just chasing the buck. That’s what we do, that’s what we’re trained to do, and we consider that thinking. And the better your strategy in making money and turning things over, the smarter you are, the more intelligent you are. And in January 2007, I had three events, unrelated events, come together and form a perfect storm in my life. The first one was we were moving home downsizing. The second one is we got a phone call from my brother in law to say that my wife’s father had a stroke and we needed to get to see him. And we went to see him, and within a week he passed away. I had an appointment for a colonoscopy. And so I went to the health center to have the colonoscopy to discover that with the MRI that they were doing, they discovered a bone tumor sitting on my pelvis on the right side, and it was the size of a large eggplant, an obergene. I mean, it was huge.

Wes Moss [00:07:44]:

Dad, you had symptoms.

George Jerjian [00:07:47]:

Yeah, here’s the thing. I was having a lot of back pains and I was going to the gym three times a week, I was going to physio, I was doing everything. And I even went to a specialist to check the back problem. And because I’m with an equivalent of, I think in the US, you call it HMOs, it’s one of these insurance backed things. So they’ve got parameters and they can’t do this and they can’t do that, but they can do this. So on my second visit, I told the specialist, I said, look, the pain is above, not below. You guys are taking MRIs below. And look, I said, I’ll pay for it, can you just take it above? The guy goes, I really wish I could, but I can’t because I’m precluded from so anyway, they finally found it in error by mistake when they were doing a colonoscopy. And the nurse comes up to me and goes, did you come in for your pelvis? I go, no, I thought you must have the wrong patient. And then it dawned on me, whoa, what’s wrong with my pelvis? And then literally the next day I’m seeing an oncologist. So I go in with my wife and we see the oncologist and the guy says that it looks like you have a bone tumor sitting on your pelvis. And in 98% of cases, bone tumors are secondary cancer, which means it’s spread across your body, and which means invariably, that there’s nothing we can do, and that you’re looking at six to eight months, tops.

Wes Moss [00:09:40]:

Holy so just you went from normal life to extraordinary fear all within just a day? Just yeah.

George Jerjian [00:09:52]:

It’s like being hit by a truck and you’re just out of it. I was in this space of having an out of body experience. I’m looking at this guy, he’s dying, that can’t be me, that’s him, that’s not me.

Wes Moss [00:10:06]:

And at the time, you didn’t even feel bad? All that bad at the time, no.

George Jerjian [00:10:10]:

It was just the back pain that was constantly annoying me, but not all the time. It came and went and occasionally I’d have a sciatica pain, but that’s the only indication I had. Anyway, long story short, three weeks of tests, and I’m talking about weird tests. I’m not going to go into the details because I don’t think we have time for that, but essentially for three weeks, I’d get up every morning, I’m looking at the sunrise and going, how many of those am I going to see? So I had thoughts like that. But what was surprising to me, actually shocking to me, was that I wasn’t afraid of death. And I see it’s bizarre because prior to this, if you’d ask me, Would you be afraid of death? I’d go, yeah, truth be told, of course I am, I’d be afraid of death. But there was a calmness around me. The only thing that agitated me was that I have two daughters and they were teenagers at that time and I wasn’t going to be around for them. That was killing me. That was the only thing that was really causing me to well up from time to time, the fact that I wasn’t going to be around. I wasn’t really thinking about that. It wasn’t top of mind. I was wondering what things I wanted to do in the next six months to make sure that my cup runeth over. I wanted to make sure that so.

Wes Moss [00:11:49]:

You didn’t get hit with this overwhelming anxiety around death, necessarily. You were more worried that you’re leaving behind teenagers as a parent. And were you also, though? Was it though? That thinking, okay, it’s so definitive, I really only have six months. What can I do in these next six months without necessarily a whole lot of anxiety around what they had told you, that you only have six months left to live?

George Jerjian [00:12:18]:

When I’m looking back on it, I think what was a saving to answer your question, I think what was a saving feature for me was that we were busy packing, moving homes.

Wes Moss [00:12:31]:

And this is, by the way, in the UK, this is not when you’re in the United States, this is in.

George Jerjian [00:12:35]:

The UK, this is in London. This is all happening in London.

Wes Moss [00:12:37]:

All in London.

George Jerjian [00:12:38]:

Yeah. So I’m so busy packing, it’s almost like it was a weird sensation because I was almost numb. I’m going through a process of packing, moving, what’s going to storage, what’s going to our new place, and I’m thinking, what is all this about? And I realized the futility of all this stuff because I’m leaving, mate. I’m not around. I’m kind of almost doing it for my wife, as it were, helping out, but I hadn’t quite processed the magnitude of what was coming.

Wes Moss [00:13:24]:

So then they go into these tests. So you’re busy packing tests.

George Jerjian [00:13:28]:

Right.

Wes Moss [00:13:29]:

And they keep they’re going back and forth to see how much this is spread, et cetera.

George Jerjian [00:13:34]:

Yeah, they did all kinds of tests to find out if there was any spread of cancer. So they did all these tests, and three weeks later, we go and see the oncologist and he says, I’ve got some good news and bad news. The good news is that your bone tumor is benign but aggressive. Benign means that you’re not going to die. Well, aggressive means that we got to take it out, which means an operation. And it looks like it could mean you need a hip replacement, et cetera, et cetera.

Wes Moss [00:14:13]:

Serious operation.

George Jerjian [00:14:14]:

Yeah.

Wes Moss [00:14:14]:

What a roller coaster.

George Jerjian [00:14:16]:

Well, the thing is, I punched the air because my death sentence has been commuted to six months. Right. So I was super happy. But I was thinking to myself that even with this six month thing, it’s not fun.

Wes Moss [00:14:33]:

But after they realized it was a benign, you no longer thought you were going to die.

George Jerjian [00:14:38]:

Oh, yeah. Because the guy said, if it’s benign, it’s just we just need to operate and take it out. Got it. It’s the fact that actually, he said to me, you’re lucky because you belong to the 2% club.

Wes Moss [00:14:51]:

98% of the time it would be and you fell into the 2%.

George Jerjian [00:14:55]:

Exactly.

Wes Moss [00:14:55]:

But you also went through almost an entire month of just saying, this is it. So I’ve got six months left to live.

George Jerjian [00:15:01]:

Yeah. But on reflection, it was a blessing in disguise because it woke me up. It woke me up to really live a life that I should have been leading instead of the kind of fake life that I’ve been living until then.

Wes Moss [00:15:16]:

George, let me ask you this. I think of how you describe I think what you said in the beginning today is that you were chasing the buck. We don’t necessarily use that phrase here in the United States all that much, but we certainly live that it’s very normal in America to be 100% about work. It’s very normal to be all work. And we live for our work. And we actually look at Europe and we say that to some extent, that the philosophy in Europe is the opposite of that, where it’s live to work here in the United States, and it’s work to live in European cultures, if you will. But you’re saying in the UK, similar to the US, where it was about career, making money, saving money. And what was your career, by the way? What were you boiling away at?

George Jerjian [00:16:04]:

So which one do you want me to answer first?

Wes Moss [00:16:06]:

All of the above.

George Jerjian [00:16:07]:

All the above. Okay. Just quickly going back, I lived in the States for eight years and I was brought up with a strong work ethic. It’s perhaps not a very British thing, but to be fair, there’s a lot of Brits who work very hard, but the Brits don’t have the same work ethic as the Americans or North Americans. But that said, I think in North America, when people are working at jobs they love, it’s not really work. It’s hard work when you’re working at a job because you need the money and you’re working at the job because of the money. And that’s where it’s very painful. And I think it’s also very self destructive if you’re working in a job because of the money, which, by the.

Wes Moss [00:16:59]:

Way, George, is extraordinarily prominent here.

George Jerjian [00:17:04]:

Absolutely.

Wes Moss [00:17:06]:

I’m not going to say it’s 98%, but it is 90% of people would rather not be doing the job that they’re doing.

George Jerjian [00:17:16]:

Well, I think that’s the sad thing about it, and I don’t blame them because I would say that kind of in a good part of my life I was doing that myself, by the way.

Wes Moss [00:17:28]:

What industry?

George Jerjian [00:17:29]:

Okay, I’m a maverick. I have worked in very different industries. I’ve worked in import export, I’ve worked in marketing, I’ve worked in furniture design and selling to design centers across the US. I’ve worked in commercial real estate for 35 years, marketing for 35 years overall. And that’s kind of been my industry. And also I’ve been involved in funding and litigation for 15 years. And I’ve also been an author of eleven books. So I’ve lived multiple lives. And I suspect that’s probably one of the reasons why I wasn’t as disturbed about dying as I might have been. Because if you’re living life to the max, if you’re living several lives in one lifetime, then there’s kind of less issue about regrets. Regrets. I haven’t lived my life, but that said, now I’m really living the life that I desire and want to live.

Wes Moss [00:18:36]:

Okay, so at 52, you had this whipsaw, emotional life whipsaw. And what did year 53 look like then for you? So did that force you into some sort of retirement? Was it a catalyst for you to rethink the plate spinning career that you had? Which, by the way, we understand this very well here in the United States, and I do, where it’s not uncommon to have a couple of jobs, a couple very real jobs, not side gigs, but full time job number one. Full time job number two, sometimes full time job number three. So we end up working just all the time, and it’s not totally uncommon. It sounds exactly like what you were doing. So was there a big downshift or was it a massive change in what you were going to do with your time?

George Jerjian [00:19:27]:

Okay, that’s a really good question. I took the slow lane. I decided that, okay, time is the most important commodity I have now, which I wasn’t aware of because until then, I thought I was immortal. I mean, I know it sounds stupid, but I think the way we live our lives, we literally function as though we are immortal, and that’s the danger, because we’re not. And so we’re living a delusion. So at 53, I decided the best thing to do is I retire, because that’s what we’ve been programmed to do, right? Work stops, you retire. And I didn’t even know what I was doing in retirement. I wasn’t fully retired. I wes semi retired. And believe me, that sucked. So I thought, full retirement? Oh, my God. Hold on. Just explain.

Wes Moss [00:20:18]:

So you’re 52, you were semi retired, and then you went to fully by 53.

George Jerjian [00:20:24]:

No, I did not fully retire ever. I was semi retired for ten years. So what I was doing was instead of having one thing that I was focused on doing, I was only doing what needed to be done and filling time, doing things that I wanted to do.

Wes Moss [00:20:45]:

Like what?

George Jerjian [00:20:46]:

Playing golf, traveling, going for long breakfasts, long lunches, and sometimes long dinners.

Wes Moss [00:20:58]:

Doesn’t sound awful, by the way, George, but no.

George Jerjian [00:21:01]:

The first six months or a year, it’s like, this is the life. And then boredom sets in because you’re filling time. You’re not passionate. You’re not invested in something with passion. And I got to tell you, passion is beautiful. Filling time, which you think is kind of a dream world situation, an ideal situation is a nightmare.

Wes Moss [00:21:34]:

Okay, you’re catching me fresh off of having coffee in a coffee shop for the first time in probably seven years. I was in Tampa the other yesterday, and we had a meeting set up in a coffee shop at 10:00 A.m.. So there was no real rush, right? 10:00 a.m. Easy time. And I looked around, and I thought, wow, this is cool. I get why people it was the perfect coffee shop scenario in a cool little area of Tampa. It wasn’t a chain. It was its own little coffee shop with some character, and multiple people were with their headphones and their laptops, and they were clearly working. Then you’ve got me. I had a four person meeting, and we had an hour and a half coffee chat. I had an almond latte. It was wonderful. And I thought, no wonder people love these coffee shops so much. I totally forgot what it’s like. I get it. So you did that for about a year, and it was cool in the beginning. So you had a what was that feeling like? Was it a were you relaxed? Were you excited that you get to tell me about the feeling of that, at least the beginning? That was fun.

George Jerjian [00:22:47]:

The feeling is that I’m king of my castle. I’ve reached the pinnacle. This is what people are slaving away.

Wes Moss [00:22:55]:

To reach, to be able to do.

George Jerjian [00:22:57]:

To be able to do what I’m doing. It’s a great feeling. I mean, really. And enjoying that cup of coffee. I like my cappuccinos. I’m still an old school. I like my cappuccinos with no chocolate on and think myself, damn it, I’ll have some pastry as well. Gone. Bring it in. Bring it in. I want it. It’s like, this is it. You’ve reached the pinnacle because you’re now king of time. You’re free of all the shackles that you had before.

Wes Moss [00:23:37]:

Full disclosure, I am affiliated with Capital Investment Advisors, which is a full service and a fee only financial planning and investment management firm in Atlanta and Denver and Tampa and Phoenix or wherever you are. And if you’d like to take your retirement planning or retire sooner, journey to the next level, capital Investment Advisors would love to help. You can find our team and schedule a time to chat. Right@yourwealth.com? That’s Y-O-U rwealth.com. You may be the first person to describe it as this multi phase where you get this bliss. So we’re talking right now. You’re in the 6th to maybe it’s the honeymoon, right? So it’s the it’s the Time Freedom honeymoon, right?

George Jerjian [00:24:23]:

It’s exactly what it is.

Wes Moss [00:24:24]:

Where were you financially, and did you what was your level of financial confidence at age 53 in this honeymoon phase? Were you thinking, I’ve got way more, plenty of money saved, no worries, or I’ve got kind of just enough if I do this right. What was your thought around your financial.

George Jerjian [00:24:44]:

Situation at that time? I had zero financial worries. I had no worries at all. I’d kind of reached a place where if I was careful, I wouldn’t have to work another day.

Wes Moss [00:25:03]:

Okay, so you were in a strong position. You weren’t in a position where you had $100 million in generational wealth, zero worry. You were conscious of, hey, I can’t overspend. I can do a pastry, but I can’t also do a Maserati.

George Jerjian [00:25:18]:

No. I mean, no, listen, truth be told, that is how I felt. But the reality, of course, is that what I didn’t know then, which I know now, is that 96% of the US population will outlive their savings. That is based on Charles Schwab saying that retirees need about $2 million savings, total savings, to retire reasonably comfortably. This is pre Trump, pre pandemic, pre Ukraine. Factor all the rest in, I reckon even 2 million is not going to cut it. So then you look at how many people in the United States have assets worth 2 million, right? It’s like 2%. So to be conservative, I add another 2% and I work out, take 4% away from 196% of the population. Let’s be even more conservative. 90%. Nine out of ten retirees will outlive their savings. So longevity has destroyed the pension equation. But the money is a side issue here. It’s not even the number one issue. The two main issues are right. I mean, I think I’m jumping the gun here, but I did a survey of 21,000 people, 55 to 75.

Wes Moss [00:26:53]:

55 to 75. 21,000 people.

George Jerjian [00:26:57]:

21,000 people in North America, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the English speaking world. And I asked them nine questions, and one of the pivotal questions was, what is your single biggest challenge in retirement? Now, in parentheses, this was done right in the middle of the pandemic. Right. I’m just putting it out there because the answers are kind of going to show you that 50% said health issues is their single biggest challenge. Yes. That took me aback.

Wes Moss [00:27:30]:

Whoa. 50% 50%.

George Jerjian [00:27:33]:

So people are worrying about their health. Right. The pandemic didn’t help, obviously, so it might have even contributed to how high that is. The second one was 35% outliving. Their savings, 15% aimlessness, lack of purpose. Now, that’s the question number five. Two questions later, question number seven, I asked them, I tweaked the question, if you were given a magic wand, what single challenge would you address? 50% said health again. So that doesn’t change. But what changes is you give people agency 35 or 36% said wanting a new purpose.

Wes Moss [00:28:27]:

Whoa.

George Jerjian [00:28:28]:

Yeah. The finance and the purpose flipped over, which was a fascinating thing. But after I’d done this study, which.

Wes Moss [00:28:37]:

Took a year, so hold on, hold on. So it makes sense. So health stayed the same, but instead of worrying about outliving their money, 35% now, 35%, if they had a magic wand, would figure out a new purpose. And then the latter part was the rest of it a money concern.

George Jerjian [00:28:56]:

Yeah, the 15%. 15% was money. Yeah. So it’s interesting when you give people agency, money is not the most important factor, but money is not the most important factor, because after I did the study, I was telling this to an engineer. You know how engineers tick boxes? They check everything? They tick boxes and all the boxes are ticked, but you have this nagging feeling that something is wrong, something isn’t right here. And that’s the feeling I had when I finished the survey. And I realized that when I came across a quote from Henry Ford who said, if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said, Faster horses. Isn’t that brilliant?

Wes Moss [00:29:44]:

Yeah, that is brilliant.

George Jerjian [00:29:45]:

And here I am asking people what is their single biggest challenge in retirement? And they’re telling me what they think. And they’re not wrong. They’re absolutely right. That’s what they think. That’s what they believe. But here’s the point. They don’t know what they don’t know. And that’s where I then had to backtrack and ask myself, what is the real problem here? Now, we’re not talking about the symptoms. What is the real issue? The underlying issue here and the underlying issue, it came to me by process of elimination, is that just like and I always come back to the Russia Ukraine war. For some unknown reason, the first casualty in war is the truth. Why? Because propaganda kicks in.

Wes Moss [00:30:41]:

Sure.

George Jerjian [00:30:42]:

Right. That’s just the nature of war. The first casualty in retirement, which nobody recognizes because it’s kind of hidden, is loss. Of identity. Who am I now? And that loss of identity is like a virus. It’s like a termite in a house. It eats away at the staircase and you don’t know. You go up and down that staircase every day, nothing’s wrong. And then suddenly, boom, it caves in.

Wes Moss [00:31:17]:

So you’re doing this survey. What age were you at this doing all this work?

George Jerjian [00:31:22]:

Oh, really good question. We’ve been going backwards and forwards. I was semi retire for ten years. So I picked this up ten years into semi retiree and I was getting increasingly weary, stressed out. I was losing my self confidence. I book lunch or dinners with people and they cancel on me because they’re busy doing something else. And I go, oh my God, I’m not a priority anymore.

Wes Moss [00:31:58]:

So this is a new topic for us because you’re talking about I guess it’s not just purpose here. Identity is a deeper fundamental human feeling than purpose, isn’t it?

George Jerjian [00:32:17]:

No, I mean, actually I’m glad you’re making this point because what it is, is that for me, I’ve worked backwards, but just process of elimination. You go for the obvious things and then suddenly you realize, well, this is not it, which was the survey. Then I end up because purpose was an important factor here. And then I realize it’s about identity and purpose and they’re interlinked.

Wes Moss [00:32:42]:

They’re interlinked. That does make sense. Okay, hold on. Just to describe to our audience, the issue you’re seeing here is that you’re starting to lose, particularly for such a work based culture, whether it’s UK or it’s here, even though I can be busy and I can have plenty to do, my value in the world is no longer what it used to be. And that is psychologically really difficult for a lot of people. Is that what you’re saying?

George Jerjian [00:33:12]:

Absolutely. And the higher you up in the totem pole pole, the worse it is for you.

Wes Moss [00:33:17]:

Yeah.

George Jerjian [00:33:18]:

If you’re a CEO and the next day you’re back at home, that’s harsh. And for those of us who are not so high up the totem pole, there’s a relief that there’s karma in life. I’m not doing so badly. But the thing is, if I can just take a step back. Let’s take a helicopter view. We talked about money. We’re going to outlive our savings, right? What’s the next thing that goes wrong? I want to focus on this, on identity first. The identity issue is that we go through a transformation and we’ve lost this idea that we go from adolescence wes transition into adulthood. We are prepared for this new immersion into adulthood. We go to college, we do all the stuff, and we know when we move into adulthood that we need to let go of our adolescence. Right. It’s not easy, but we do it.

Wes Moss [00:34:26]:

Yeah, I guess we’re supposed to do that.

George Jerjian [00:34:29]:

Exactly. And most of us are now following doing work that we don’t enjoy, but because it. Puts bread on the table. We’re on it. And we spend moss of our life doing work we don’t particularly like. But it puts money on the table. We get good at it. We build an ego, an identity around it. Okay? And then we get to the stage where you retire or you get to a place where I am. You confront death, and you have to change how you think, because this is a really hard, difficult place to be. Think of the caterpillar cocoon butterfly effect, right? The caterpillar goes into the chrysalis and it breaks down into caterpillar juice. Not an easy job. This is painful. This is difficult to be reconstituted into fractals, to become a butterfly. So when you go into retirement, recognize this. There’s an awful lot of difficulties and challenges, but the best is yet to come. You have to believe that. If you believe it, you can make it. If you don’t believe it, you’re right as well.

Wes Moss [00:35:39]:

And it’s always then, George, it’s always this transition. There’s no escaping this. Or does your work help us get through that metamorphosis in a more informed way? And what is that?

George Jerjian [00:35:57]:

Is that again, really, really good question. We move across. But just before I answer that, can I just finish off the thread? So identity and purpose, they are interlinked because they’re two sides of the same coin. Identity is in effect, who you desire to be, who you really are inside all the facades and the personas that you’ve created in the world. In other words, we’re not who we think we are. We’re not who we project to other people. The persona that we project to the outside world is one that has been carefully and craftily. Chiseled. We’ve worked hard at chiseling who we are to present this wonderful image, right? Of sure. And again, it’s an image. It’s not real, because the real person behind that is vulnerable right. Is a warmer human being with feelings.

Wes Moss [00:37:06]:

Right.

George Jerjian [00:37:06]:

We do not display that, because if we do that in the outside world, we’ve been taught, and it’s our fear, we’ll be crushed. But guess what? Retirement is the perfect place to take down that mask, to become who you really are, what you really feel. Right? And this isn’t an instantaneous process, and I’m sure there are geniuses out there for whom it is, but for me, it was a long, hard road.

Wes Moss [00:37:39]:

So really, you had a whole ten years of thinking you were in the right spot, but really, it impacted you mentally. It was almost a decline for you over that ten year period.

George Jerjian [00:37:50]:

Absolutely. I have more energy today than I had ten years ago. So that’s the first thing. But to come back to the question you asked from my personal experience, and I then devised the Dare program, which in itself, right, did not suddenly come as a download from heaven.

Wes Moss [00:38:14]:

Download from heaven?

George Jerjian [00:38:15]:

I worked it out. I mean, I chiseled at this. I worked at it and it didn’t come out right the first time. It had to be played around with. And ultimately it was this wonderful woman that came out and said, george, I’ve got just the right word for you. It’s there. And I go, what? She said, yes, because the first part is discover what retirement is and what it’s not, which is what I was saying, but not in those words. The second letter, A. Assimilate is about assimilating new information about our minds, particularly our subconscious mind, which is 99% of our mind, but none of us are ever taught how to use it. Right. Because we all been programmed to work in a certain way, to deliver certain.

Wes Moss [00:39:06]:

Goods and chisel our image.

George Jerjian [00:39:08]:

Exactly. And not to be who we are, so we can take orders and do it. R is for rewiring our mindset and E is for expanding our horizons. Now, there’s a lot of material here which I can’t go into, but the word dare in itself is also really important because it’s another word for courage. And you need courage to unretire. Right. Anybody who unretires, I salute them because they’re taking a risk. They’re taking a risk from being in the safe place, which, by the way, of course, we know is not a safe place to be because you’re a plankton and you’re going to be eaten. It’s over. You will outlive your savings. You’re going to actually outlive your savings and you’re going to run out of money at the worst possible time.

Wes Moss [00:40:03]:

Most people. Most people.

George Jerjian [00:40:04]:

Most people, yeah. And even those who have enough money to survive retirement, their cognitive abilities are going to disintegrate and they’re going to go downhill because they haven’t created what I call a new beginning.

Wes Moss [00:40:23]:

They’re really kind of starting at the end as opposed to restarting. What you’re saying is that very normally, retirement is the beginning of the end. And what you’re saying is it needs to be a brand new beginning, not the beginning of the end.

George Jerjian [00:40:37]:

Correct. And the reason for that is that the word retirement itself, just look at the word if you sort of drill down, retirement is a withdrawal from active life.

Wes Moss [00:40:47]:

Right.

George Jerjian [00:40:48]:

The concept itself is flawed because if you look at nature, nothing retires in nature. You’re either growing or dying. Those are the two binary choices.

Wes Moss [00:41:00]:

That’s right.

George Jerjian [00:41:00]:

And if you choose retirement by default, you’re choosing death. And death can come in all forms, particularly the cognitive. Once this starts to go, because you’re not engaged socially or mentally, you’ve already signed your own death warrant. Whereas if you choose a new beginning, you’re choosing to have a beginner’s mind and to start again.

Wes Moss [00:41:30]:

I want to get to choose a new beginning. But if we go back to where we fall and we’re 62 or 65 and we’ve stopped working right. Clearly you found that health is a perpetual concern and it probably only grows and of course we’re already talking about identity. But then regrets, is that part of that difficult process to get through that you miss work, that you maybe just moss social connectedness. But let’s talk through regret, health and identity for a minute, okay?

George Jerjian [00:42:03]:

Just thinking about you retire, right? The mindset you’re in is that I’ve done everything. I’ve reached the top of the game. I’ve got all my certificates up on the wall. I’ve got all my books. And now I’m an elder statesman. People come to me, guess what? Nobody’s coming to you. Nobody wants to know you anymore. You’re a has been because you’ve chosen to retire and you’re surprised that nobody’s going to knock on your door. Trust me, it’s a very lonely place and you don’t want to disengage from people. Now, here’s the caveat. I was studying. Dr. Elizabeth Kubler ross’s work. She’s the Swiss American psychologist who interviewed hundreds of people on their deathbeds. And what she discovered is that a great majority of them had retirees. In fact, more than that, they were actually angry. They were angry and resentful because they had not lived their lives. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that they had lived the lives that other people had expected of them. And invariably it’s your deceased parents whose voices are still churning in your head. So you’re doing what you were told to do. And if that doesn’t work, your spouse helped you to think that way. And for some of us, including my good self, even your kids end up telling you what to do. So it’s like, hello, who’s looking after me? I’m not standing up for myself. I’m supporting other people. Yes, love is really important. And listen, I am a family guy. I love my family to death. Well, close. But you know what I mean. The point I’m making is that what we don’t realize is we betray ourselves for the people we love. And the danger here is this that on your deathbed you’ll be kicking yourself. Because guess what? The truth of the matter is this. We’ve all heard the adage, love your neighbor as yourself. It’s an equation. Love your neighbor as yourself. So here’s my question to you. If you don’t love yourself, how can you love your neighbor?

Wes Moss [00:44:51]:

And therein lies the problem. If we go back to this thought of regret, is it that so we’re listening to what our parents told us to do, what our spouse tells us do what we think we’re supposed to do and we regret that we didn’t take chances? Or is it that we regret that we didn’t live the last 20 and 30 years doing what we wanted to do because we were stuck in a retiree quagmire and just were slowly sinking. Is that so much of the regret?

George Jerjian [00:45:21]:

The regret is that we succumbed to our fears. Fears of lack of money, fears of rocking the boat, fears of my spouse will leave me if I do what I want, fears that I’m going to upset my kids. And it’s about putting other people, other people’s needs before ours. And ultimately, here’s the question. If you take that chance, if you take that risk to be who you are meant to be, what kind of message do you think that will send to your kids and grandkids? See, Grandpa took a chance at the age of 68 and started a new business. He took a chance and he actually left his spouse and went to Arkansas to start some farm. I don’t know.

Wes Moss [00:46:09]:

Wait, George, you didn’t move to Arkansas and leave your wife, did you?

George Jerjian [00:46:12]:

Not yet. We haven’t got there yet. But my point is that nothing is off the table.

Wes Moss [00:46:20]:

But we do so culturally, we do. Whether it’s in the United States or it’s in the UK. You’re right. The prevailing thought is that anything new and big is totally off the table. And you’re challenging that.

George Jerjian [00:46:34]:

What I’m saying is that, okay, here’s the point. Only in the face of death. And this is one of the reasons why in our society, we don’t like to talk about death. We don’t like to face death. And everything is anesthetized around death, right? Funeral homes, closed casket where nobody wants to see death, nobody wants to meet death. And we’re almost in denial. And we don’t realize that if we don’t keep this is what the Benedictine monks used to do. One of the things they used to be told is for 1500 years, Benedictine monks have been told to keep death. Top of mind. Why? Because, A, none of us know our date of death. Secondly, if you really want to engage in life and be present in the moment and enjoy each moment that we have which is not guaranteed, know that you might not make it to the end of the night. So here’s my question. Living in a lie because it’s convenient and we don’t rock the boat, we’re not helping anyone, least of all ourselves.

Wes Moss [00:47:52]:

George, tell me some. So you’ve dedicated your life to this new, let’s call it an unretirement phase, finding identity, finding purpose. How do we do it? How do you take I love this idea of just totally starting over, taking off the shackles and maybe some examples of folks that you have worked with or interviewed or talked to that really did a great job of restarting new beginnings, a totally new chapter. How do we do it, man?

George Jerjian [00:48:21]:

Okay, first of all, I wish everybody could do it, but obviously everybody has to make that personal choice. You can take a horse to water, you can’t force it to drink, to give examples. I mean, I’ve got three at the top of my mind, I’m thinking of a guy, actually a woman by the name of Judy from Nashville, Tennessee, right? Here’s a woman who was depressed for years. She was unhappy, depressed. She didn’t know what to do. She was retired and she was stuck. And then she did my digital course, my eight week online digital course, and transformed her life completely. In fact, on my website, I’ve got her testimonial. She says I saved her life. I’m not sure I go that far, but it’s very nice of her to say that. But she said I saved her life because now she’s totally engaged in what she’s doing. She’s working towards getting herself she was in It and health and I don’t know, for six years or something, she was like, drifting, going nowhere, very depressed, everything semi retired. I don’t know if she was semi retired or fully retired. I think she was sort of fully retired. But she did my course and she found herself creating a new beginning for itself. And she’s now finishing a personal trainer certification.

Wes Moss [00:49:57]:

Totally different than what she used to do.

George Jerjian [00:49:58]:

Yeah. And now she’s going to focus on people her age. So she’s serving her tribe, which is what I do. Right. My clients range between 55 and 75. Right. That’s my purpose, is and in fact, it’s on my website. It says my elevator pitch is I help retirees, find a new beginning. So she has found her new beginning. So that’s Judy from Nashville, Tennessee. Then I have John Rick from St. Louis, Missouri. He was a fundraiser. He’s actually no, he’s 80 something now, 82 and five. Four years ago, I helped him. He wes struggling because at 78, he couldn’t find new clients. New clients would worry that he might drop on the job. Right.

Wes Moss [00:50:54]:

So old to hire you.

George Jerjian [00:50:56]:

Yeah. So we sat down and we worked out. He loves what he does, fundraising. It’s his passion. And his trouble was he couldn’t find clients. So we worked around it and he discovered that if he worked with a company, a fundraising company, if anything happened to him, there’s a fallback situation, so all is not lost. And the company recruited him, and off he goes. He’s now serving first of all, he says he’s got more energy, enthusiasm now than he’s ever had at 82. At 82, he’s now helping five schools in St. Louis in a poor black neighborhood that don’t have money. He’s almost doing pro bono, but he’s pitching it to very wealthy people who will then back pay him for the work he’s done. So he’s actually kind of paying it forward and helping them to find wealthy donors who will put the foundation stones for endowments for these five schools in St. Louis. And he says, I’ll die a happy guy.

Wes Moss [00:52:18]:

The work I’m doing, never been happier. So. Judy. John. This is us. I love this.

George Jerjian [00:52:25]:

Yeah, I’ve got one person in the well, I’ve got two in the UK, but I’ll just share one more. Karen. Karen was a nurse who then became a carer. And then she opened a business as a carer, hiring former nurses to do caring work and earn more money. And she reached the point in her life where she’s retiring soon and she doesn’t know what to do. So she did my course, and now she’s created, right, this concept because we work on imagination, right? There’s no imagination. That’s stupid. Throw out what it is you want, what is it you love to do, what gives you joy working down that path? What do you lose all sense of time in? And the other question I have, which is beautiful and it gets so much results, is what are you afraid of?

Wes Moss [00:53:23]:

Hold on. I understand imagination, which is a wonderful word. I love the thought around. I think I use curiosity a lot, but I think I like the idea of imagination. You’re just totally brainstorming around what you would maybe want to do at some point. And nothing’s off the table. The farm in Arkansas, anything’s on the table, nothing’s off imagination. But what is it about? What are you afraid of that works?

George Jerjian [00:53:46]:

I’ll tell you what it is. Before we do that, can I just finish about Karen. She’s now looking she’s got herself a van campervan, and she’s going around Europe visiting her dad in Spain, and she’s doing all the stuff that she was going people think about doing in retirement but never get round to it. Guess why? They have identity issues they have to deal with. And that goes on the back burner. And before you know it, they’re in a nursing home and it’s over.

Wes Moss [00:54:12]:

It’s over.

George Jerjian [00:54:13]:

So you’ve got to do it.

Wes Moss [00:54:15]:

Karen’s running around Europe in a van.

George Jerjian [00:54:17]:

In a campervan, but wait, in a luxurious campervan. But her sort of dream is now to have a kind of health center in a large field near the sea in Norfolk, in the U. K. And have holistic pods around the center where people in that sort of health and wellness can come and rent for their clients. And she’s going to make honey, she’s going to make various stuff, but she’s got this wonderful thing and she’s going to sell out. She was afraid one of her daughters, who’s on her own would feel bad that she’s leaving her. And I go, well, might she not join you? Why is it that you see, this is what parents do. We do it for other people. But again, if you think big, they’ll come with you. So here’s the thing. You’re turning things around. So that was Karen. But coming back to your question about fear. Why is fear so important? Fear is inculcated into us as we’ve grown up. Don’t do this, don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself. Children are fearless. Puppies are fearless. They don’t know. They just try new things. And the topic you talked about, curiosity is a huge thing. Children always asking questions. We we’ve stopped asking questions. We only make statements and declarations. Wes, don’t ask questions. Because if you ask questions, it means you’re stupid. And you don’t know. You have new experience. Get real. So curiosity is hugely important, but coming back to fear, and I love this quote from Joseph Campbell, the American Mythologist, who said, the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. In other words, what you’re looking for is right behind that fear. So what are you afraid of.

Wes Moss [00:56:30]:

As you take people through this journey, this new beginnings? Whether it takes in in your case, it maybe takes a couple of months. You say it’s eight weeks, but that’s a fair amount of time to put into it. But it doesn’t seem like a tall order either because it is such an important restart. So you take people through for, I don’t know, you said eight weeks or so, and you’re constantly getting them to imagine what they could be doing, drop the fears of what they think they shouldn’t be doing, and ultimately they arrive at some sort of new blueprint or new destination. That’s what your purpose now is.

George Jerjian [00:57:10]:

Okay. In a nutshell, yeah. So my purpose is, if I can rephrase that, is people do this eight week course, which is 90 minutes each week. This is the live 119 minutes each week with me. I go through a 30 minutes presentation to give them the material, and the next hour is spent on the exercises. And the reason I spend that and I kick off with the exercises is because it starts to trigger things and they start asking questions and then suddenly, oh, yeah, that applies to me, too. So there’s a lot of banter that goes on and conversation, and each week it’s the same thing until the 8th week, we end up collating all these exercises into a one page document, which I call a blueprint. Now, the blueprint is effectively saving them eight years of work.

Wes Moss [00:58:13]:

Because it took you eight years to figure this out.

George Jerjian [00:58:16]:

It took me longer. I’m just being generous. It took me longer. What I’m trying to do is fast forward from where you are now, retired, stuck to moving into the next stage. And I was lucky. Most people who’ve been retire for 810 years, well, I was semi retire, so it’s not quite the same. But if you’re retired, this starts to go, it’s over, you can’t come back.

Wes Moss [00:58:42]:

The plane has already landed. And in your case, you were almost about to be landed and you really took the plane out of a nosedive.

George Jerjian [00:58:50]:

I was so unhappy, I pushed myself out and I went to learn about mindset. And I mean, the story I didn’t tell you is I came to the point where it was so bad, I ended up doing a 30 day silent retreat in North Wales.

Wes Moss [00:59:08]:

What is that?

George Jerjian [00:59:10]:

That wes one of Wales.

Wes Moss [00:59:12]:

I want to say across the if I would be in in near Liverpool, and I look across almost a bay and I can see whales. Where was I?

George Jerjian [00:59:23]:

Yeah, I was near Snowdonia, the Mount mount Snowden, which is not too far away from where you were just pitching, and it was in the Clid Valley. Beautiful.

Wes Moss [00:59:35]:

A silent retreat.

George Jerjian [00:59:37]:

30 day silent retirees. It’s an ignatian Jesuit retreat.

Wes Moss [00:59:43]:

Dreadful, by the way.

George Jerjian [00:59:45]:

I know it sounds dreadful, believe me, it was one of the best investments I’ve made. Me. I’m a talker. Three days in, I was ready to shoot myself.

Wes Moss [00:59:55]:

This is fascinating to me. So, a silent treat. Is it truly silent or is there some there’s some conversation. Come on.

George Jerjian [01:00:01]:

Okay, first of all, no newspapers, no TV, nothing, no smartphone, everything is off the table. You have no connection to the outside world. All that white noise is taken away. So that’s the first thing. When you say silence, they give you two days to sort of settle in, right? And then it kicks off at 05:00 p.m. On the third date. Now, three days in and I was sweating. If I had come by car, I might have left. I might have just gone in the car, said, Screw this, I’m out of here. But I resisted all impulses to leave and to stay in and to gradually decompress and go into that silence, which most of us avoid because we don’t really want to know. That’s why we have a lot of social activities and stuff we don’t want to go in. And this journey in retirement, by the way, is a journey of the interior. There’s a galaxy inside you. You’ve no idea. You haven’t even touched it. We die as virgins before we’ve even explored ourselves. We always look to explore the universe outside us, and we don’t realize there’s a galaxy within us.

Wes Moss [01:01:27]:

I feel like almost everything you say is like a great quote. You almost speak in wonderful quotes. There’s a galaxy thank you. Within us. There’s an entire galaxy within us. So three days in, you’re totally silent and keep going. Are you really not able to there’s nobody to talk to. There’s got to be a guide or a SHERP or something.

George Jerjian [01:01:48]:

Of course there is. There’s a spiritual director. I had a wonderful woman, a nun, who was a psychologist. Yeah, psychologist.

Wes Moss [01:01:57]:

A psychologist. Nun. All right.

George Jerjian [01:01:59]:

Yeah, in Wales. Wonderful. I had a meeting with her every morning at 11:00 for half an hour, 30 minutes in, which in that 30 minutes, you spend the first 15 minutes sharing what was going through your head, your mind, your heart, the previous day. And the next 15 minutes is on what you’re going to be doing the next day, the current day. So three days in, I remember I was gagging to speak to a nun. Can you imagine? That’s how bad it was. So she came in with two cups of tea, one for her, one for me, and I said, Sister Ann, it’s so good to see you. She nearly dropped those cups of tea. But anyhow yeah, but she was a lovely woman. And great banter. She didn’t take any prisoners. And it’s amazing. I mean, one of the things that came out of that was an exercise which, by the way, I do in my course, in a slightly sort of lighter version, is doing an audit on your life, which means going back to the very beginning childhood. I chose a house people can choose a river or whatever. I chose the homes I’d lived in throughout my life. And so I went in each home and I thought, what good stuff happened here and what bad stuff happened? And I’m a writer, so I wrote two notebooks, thick notebooks over that sort of month of all the stuff that was coming out, and I wrote it. And I was able to then go back and look at what I’ve written. And I recognized that none of the good stuff that happened in my life could have happened without the preceding bad stuff. In other words, the difficulties and challenges I had opened me up to new things and good things that could not have opened up without the preceding. And in the end, I ended up selecting twelve stories in my life. And I wrote a book called Spirit of Gratitude. Crises are opportunities because opportunities invariably come to us during a crisis. So, for example, our lives are going beautifully, humming away, and suddenly shit happens. And that’s all taken away from you, right? And it can happen to any of us. It probably does, and not just once. And it forces you to go down a road you would never have gone down. And so, in a sense, having done that, I realized that even my bone tumor was a blessing in disguise. Now, you could have told me that when this was happening and I would have looked at you like you need some sort of an operation, there’s something wrong with you. But on reflection, in hindsight, it was a blessing in disguise. I woke up.

Wes Moss [01:05:18]:

So after 30 days of this mostly silent period of time, you walked away with really the true belief that it is only the difficult times that it led to your own prosperity and your own better place to be.

George Jerjian [01:05:38]:

I think what it is is that we’re so focused on pursuing happiness, we’re so focused on chasing things that we don’t realize that you don’t need to chase. You can attract. It’s just the reverse. And it takes the stress out. But it’s such a difficult thing to get your head round because we’ve been programmed differently.

Wes Moss [01:06:07]:

Tell me about that, though. Tell me your thought around attracting relative to chasing. That’s interesting.

George Jerjian [01:06:14]:

Let me give you a perfectly simple explanation, right? I wish I’d known this when I was 1718 and started dating.

Wes Moss [01:06:24]:

Well, you’ve left your wife to move to Arkansas already.

George Jerjian [01:06:28]:

Oh my God. If you’ve projected that god knows how many people are projecting that now. No, my God, this is not good news. But here’s my point. We’re always chasing. We like something, we want it, we chase it. And what that does is it repels and makes your job even harder. Right? So reverse it. If there’s a girl that you don’t like chasing you, what do you do? And maybe her brother’s your best friend. Oh, my God. What do you do? Right? So this is what I’m saying is that if you stay within your own power, right? And you do what you like, you do what you enjoy, you attract people towards you.

Wes Moss [01:07:22]:

Yeah. A new beginning. You’re right. It restarts that law of attraction. And when you’ve found an identity and a purpose, you’re right. It’s a motivating thing. There’s a lot of inertia to that. Not just to you internally, but you’re right to the outside. To the outside world. I wanted to as we wrap I don’t want to keep you for hours and hours, but I just so locked into our conversation. What do wes do about health? 50% of people list that as the number one challenge with worry. Which is, again, an interesting data point that I’ve not discussed before. I didn’t realize there was such a worry around health. When we’re in retirement, is there a way to put that at ease or do we just come to peace with that? What is your prescription for that?

George Jerjian [01:08:12]:

Probably both. I think the thing about the word health really denotes you have the word heal. In health, it’s about healing. And healing isn’t about popping pills or going to seeing your doctor. And in retirement, we have a lot of time now to worry about health because we’ve got so much time. What do we do? If we’re not worried about money? We’re worried about health because our conscious mind is open 10 hours a day. Our subconscious mind sorry. Our conscious mind is open, say, 10 hours a day. Our subconscious mind is working. Twenty four seven. And if it’s not focused on solving problems, creating stuff, doing positive things, it will do the reverse. It will create problems. So when we have time on our hands and we’re not focused, we’ll start to look for problems. And so my point is that if you’re mentally and socially engaged you won’t have to worry about your health. It’s going to look after itself. So that’s the first point. The second point is that moss of identity and retirement, right? We’re talking about mental health issues, emotional health issues, psychological health issues, spiritual health issues. And all because you don’t know who you are now. But if you create a new beginning, you now have a whole new life ahead of you where you might not have the energy that you had when you were in your 40s, but guess what? You’re going to have a different kind of energy. A kind of spiritual energy. You’re moving from knowledge to wisdom. You’re moving from role to soul. You’re in a different place. And it. Was Cicero, the Roman philosopher and senator, who said, old age is the crown of life, our life’s last act, which means the best is yet to come. But we live in a consumer society where if you hit 30 or 35 in California, you’re over your life’s over it’s, finished.

Wes Moss [01:10:44]:

35 in California is old.

George Jerjian [01:10:46]:

Right. It’s over. It’s not. It’s just another new beginning, and you have to believe that.

Wes Moss [01:10:56]:

How much fun do you have doing these courses as we wrap? Do you do these in? Well, obviously you do them via Zoom or online, but you’re there for these. Or this is something a self study?

George Jerjian [01:11:07]:

No, I have three courses. The first one is a 1 hour taster course, so people can jump in, have a look at it, feel it, look under the bonnet, see if they like it, and then they can move to a choice of the next two. One is a digital, pre recorded version of the eight week course, including how to do the exercises. There’s all videos. It’s already packaged. That’s at $195. So nobody can say, I can’t afford it.

Wes Moss [01:11:38]:

Sure.

George Jerjian [01:11:39]:

Listen, you’ve got another 25 years to go. Are you not worth $195? What is wrong with you? So I made it so that nobody could use that excuse.

Wes Moss [01:11:48]:

Sure.

George Jerjian [01:11:49]:

But I also have my live. When I say live, it’s live on Zoom.

Wes Moss [01:11:55]:

Sure.

George Jerjian [01:11:55]:

I don’t have any lives because it’s just not economic for anyone, not me or any or the client. And the live ones are fully engaged, 90 minutes each week for eight weeks, and that’s what I offer to people. And I can only do about five, six of those. So I’m going to reach a point not too far from now where I’m going to have to train trainers.

Wes Moss [01:12:22]:

Yes, you are.

George Jerjian [01:12:23]:

And my issue is that I’m happy to train the trainers, but I don’t want to run the business of the whole operation, because that’s not what I want to be doing. I’m happy to train the trainers because that’s what I love doing. For me, that’s not work.

Wes Moss [01:12:42]:

Are they one on one or do you have multiple people with it?

George Jerjian [01:12:44]:

One on one doesn’t work. No.

Wes Moss [01:12:46]:

You’ve got a few people at one time, right?

George Jerjian [01:12:49]:

I have had one to ones because that’s how I started. You can only start one to ones, but they’re not economic.

Wes Moss [01:12:56]:

So now you can have 20 people and you’re live 20 people.

George Jerjian [01:13:02]:

I’m hoping to ramp up to maybe 200, which won’t be as deep as if you do it with ten people.

Wes Moss [01:13:10]:

Sure.

George Jerjian [01:13:10]:

But it’s still going to be way better than not having done this at all.

Wes Moss [01:13:16]:

All right. This is amazing. This is so much fun. I know we didn’t really talk a whole lot about money, but the reality here is that if we are doing this next act, new beginning, complete restart, and you call this a couple of different things, but again, new beginnings. Really is. I think it really embodies. It discovering your purpose. It also typically will take care of so many other worries. A, when you talk about health, if we’re really engaged in something else, we’re less worried. We’re also probably attracting some sort of financial benefit as well.

George Jerjian [01:13:53]:

To your point, ultimately, yes, it’ll take time, like everything else. But here’s the thing with retirees and our sooner generation, a lot of whom have started new businesses, they’re also more likely to succeed because they’ve got experience.

Wes Moss [01:14:08]:

They’re more likely to succeed?

George Jerjian [01:14:10]:

Yeah, they’re more likely to succeed because they’ve got experience. They know how to recover from failure. They know that failure is kind of the building blocks to success. I’ve had to fail many times to get to where I am. It just didn’t happen overnight. And the thing is that it does cover everything else. And this is kind of you’re moving from faster horses to the motor car. That’s what you’re doing. It’s a quantum leap, right, that you.

Wes Moss [01:14:42]:

Didn’T know you weren’t asking the right question to begin with.

George Jerjian [01:14:47]:

Yeah, but you can only start with the wrong questions, and then you slowly find out the right questions and you don’t know what you don’t know.

Wes Moss [01:14:55]:

If I asked people what they want, they would have said faster horses.

George Jerjian [01:15:00]:

Little do they know, they want a question in retirement. If you’d ask people what they want in retiree, what do they tell you? Health, money, purpose. But it’s not just that. There’s that underlying problem, which is identity, and that is intricately linked to purpose. And as you say, if you find a new beginning for yourself, no more health worries. Well, I shouldn’t say that because everybody has some health, they diminish. And because they go out of mind, out of sight, out of mind, they’re no longer priority. Our mind can’t differentiate between reality and fantasy, and by that I mean our subconscious mind cannot. And that’s why the adage, Fake it till you make it works. I hate that adage, but it actually works because the mind can be fooled right into thinking. And we’re kind of fool it’s not so much that we’re fooling our minds, because if we think the reality of where we are in retirement, being stuck is reality, well, that’s the reality you want. That’s the reality you get. When we come to the other bit, the e of dare is about expansion, right? You look at a mountain and all you see is a mountain. Move 100 yards to the right and you can see behind the mountain there’s a village. Hey, I did not know that. New opportunity change the way you look at something, and what you look at changes.

Wes Moss [01:16:40]:

We’re going to leave it on that note. George Jurgen, thank you, my friend. God bless you. Thank you for being here, and let’s stay in touch.

George Jerjian [01:16:47]:

Thank you, Wes. Been a terrific interview. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Mallory Boggs [01:16:51]:

Hey, y’all. This is Mallory with the retire Sooner team. Please be sure to rate and subscribe to this podcast and share it with a friend. If you have any questions, you can find us@wesmoss.com that’s wesmoss.com. You can also follow us on Instagram and YouTube. You’ll find us under the handle. Retire sooner, podcast. And now for our show’s. Disclosure this podcast is provided to you as a resource for informational purposes only and is not to be viewed as investment advice or recommendations. This information is being presented without consideration of the investment objectives, risk tolerance or financial circumstances of any specific investor and might not be suitable for all investors. It is not intended to and should not form a primary base basis for any investment decision that you may make. Always consult your own legal, tax or investment advisor before making any investment or financial planning considerations. Please refer to the full disclosure in the Podcast description for any additional information.