Losing Work Identity in Retirement

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Get started in April on your most important project. Learn more here

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Retirement planning focuses heavily on finances — investments, Social Security, and risks.

But there’s another question that often sneaks up on people once the career chapter closes:

Do I still matter?

Our guest today has spent years researching one of the most powerful psychological needs we have as human beings — the need to feel valued and to add value.

Jennifer Breheny Wallace is an award-winning journalist and author of the new book Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose. Her work explores how feeling significant, appreciated, invested in, and depended on shapes our well-being throughout life.

And her insights have important implications for retirement. Because when work ends, many people lose one of the primary places where they knew they mattered — where their contributions were visible, valued, and relied upon.

In this conversation, we explore:

       • Why the need to matter doesn’t diminish with age
       • How retirees can build what Jennifer calls a “mattering portfolio”
       • The surprising research on relationships and resilience
       • Practical daily actions that restore a sense of meaning and contribution

If you’re thinking about retirement — or already there — this conversation may change how you think about purpose, connection, and belonging in the next chapter.

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Bio

Jennifer Breheny Wallace is the author of Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose.  She is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author whose work explores the power of mattering in our everyday lives. Through research and storytelling, Wallace examines the hidden forces shaping modern life, from the crisis of meaning in achievement culture to the essential role of mattering in personal, workplace, and societal health.  Her first book, Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic — And What We Can Do About It, was a New York Times Bestseller, an Amazon Best Book of the Year, and a Next Big Idea selection.

Wallace is the founder of The Mattering Institute, whose mission is to create cultures of mattering in workplaces and communities, and co-founder of The Mattering Movement, a nonprofit whose mission is to create cultures of mattering in K-12 schools. Wallace has partnered with The LEGO Group on its global Play Unstoppable campaign to address perfectionism and grow confidence through play. She has also consulted with Calm wellness app, Netflix, and is a BCG  BrightHouse Luminary.

She serves on the University of Michigan’s Well-being Collective Advisory Council, and the Advisory Board for Making Caring Common, a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Wallace is a Journalism Fellow at The Center for Parent and Teen Communication at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

After graduating from Harvard College, Wallace was a journalist for CBS “60 Minutes” and was part of the team that won The Robert F. Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism. She is a contributor to The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post and frequently appears on national television programs to discuss her work. Wallace serves on the board of the Coalition for the Homeless in New York City, where she lives with her husband and their three children.

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For More on Jennifer Breheny Wallace

Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose by Jennifer Breheny Wallace

Website

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Mentioned in This Retirement Podcast 

The Retirement Crisis No One Warns You About: Mattering – The Wall Street Journal

Video: Taylor Mali (What Do You Make?)

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Your choices shaped your career.

But when retirement approaches, a new design challenge appears.

Not a financial one. A life design challenge.

What will your days look like? What will energize you?  What might the next five years become?

In the Designing Your New Life in Retirement program, you’ll step back from the fray and apply design thinking to those questions, with a bias for action.

Learn more here.

Our next two groups begin in April.

Join us and get started on your most important project.

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Podcast Conversations You May Like

What Matters Most – Diane Button

How to Live a Meaningful Life – Dave Evans

Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You – Teresa Amabile

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About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

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Wise Quotes

On Adding Value

“I found this very common thread among the hundreds of people that I interviewed who, when they were going through a life transition—if it was retirement or grief, getting divorced, all these things—what they did over and over again was that they found new ways to add value. And so they would look for what I call in the book a genuine need in the world. And then they would use either their time or their talents or their treasure to meet those needs. It’s kind of a handy formula for finding purpose.”

On Your Mattering Portfolio

“Plan your retirement social portfolio—your mattering portfolio—as carefully as you plan your financial portfolio…You are only one decision, one action away from getting back on that path to mattering.”