iRetire4Him Show 116: Time for an Evaluation

Jim Brangenberg: Did you know that when you retire, your calling doesn't retire? Your calling is a lifetime calling, and if you're still around, God is not done with you yet. You've tuned in to iRetire4Him, the voice and resource of the Retirement Reformation, an organization dedicated to you, the retiree who loves Jesus and wants purpose all of your days, especially the ones in your retirement.

Bruce Bruinsma joins us today as the founder of the Retirement Reformation. He's here to encourage you and walk with you through retirement. And I'm your host, Jim Brangenberg. Check us out online. RetirementReformation. org Retirement Reformation. org

Are you asking yourself questions like, how am I doing in my retirement? Am I experiencing God's best in my retirement? Do I feel fulfilled in my retirement? Is there evidence that the Holy Spirit is active in my retirement? You've joined us in part two of a three part series of asking the best questions in our retirement and Bruce Bruinsma today is going to highlight nine evaluative questions that we should be asking ourselves to do a, take a temperature, take a gauge, look at a metric, on how are we doing in retirement and connecting our faith to our retirement and making sure we're getting the best out of this fourth quarter in life.

Bruce, I'm excited for today's show as we talk about these nine evaluative questions, but let me just ask you this question. Why are we asking ourselves questions?

Bruce Bruinsma: We're asking ourselves questions because there's so much that we don't know. And the only way that you learn is to ask questions and then to be able to receive that answer from someone who does. And those someone who does fits into some different categories. They may be friends or wise people that, that will come up with answers, but then you've got scripture and you've got the Bible because the one who really knows, God the Father, as expressed through God the Son, Jesus, who then is available to us as the Holy Spirit. And so if we don't ask questions, we're not going to learn anymore. Matter of fact, the only one who learns is the one who asks questions. Not the one who pontificates.

Jim Brangenberg: All right. So what we're gonna do in segment one and three is we're gonna go through those nine questions and I'd love for you just to give us a little bit of perspective on where this question comes from. And then in segment two we're gonna hear from Scott Couchenour about his biznistry, talking about the fourth quarter and really serving strong in that fourth quarter. I'm really excited for you to meet him because this will be your very first time meeting him.

All right. So the very first Evaluative question you're saying we should ask is - and we're circling a number between 1 and 10 on how we feel we're doing on this, and 1 was not so good and 10 is fantastic. Bruce, that's what those were?

Bruce Bruinsma: That's exactly correct. The source of the questions follows the outline of the nine fruits of the spirit. And so just as a reminder to us that the Holy Spirit is in us to help us become more Christ like, and so it starts with love, then joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self control. And so it is those characteristics. And so as I reflected on what are ways to ask about those things that we can evaluate where we are on that screen, one of the things that I thought about was if I asked it in the most positive way. And so it asks, let's say the question about love was, my basic attribute is that I express love to everyone I meet all the time. No, probably not. So maybe we need to start at another place to give us a chance to self evaluate where we are.

Therefore, the way that the first question is worded, Jim, is I seldom express love to those around me and seldom receive love. So you can have a one, which that would make that a hundred percent true all the time or 10. No, that's never true. But that question of how do we express love is a, is an important question. And how do we receive it? For example, I've got a friend. Every time I give him some love, give him an attaboy, he always no. He's not able to receive love and affirm it. Instead, he gives us that answer which isn't true and I can't get him to break that.

Jim Brangenberg: But that could be the words of affirmation is not as love language, Bruce. In order to express love and receive love, you need to know your love language so that you know how to receive.

Bruce Bruinsma: That is definitely true. I need to put a golf club in his hand.

Jim Brangenberg: A club in his hand, or maybe he needs a candy bar. You never know. He needs a nice gift. All right. So number two question is: I do not find much meaning and purpose in my daily activities. That goes to the joy part. Talk to me about that.

Bruce Bruinsma: Yeah. I think having that question in front of you and reflecting on it opens the doors for perhaps more questions, perhaps a greater seeking, or an aha moment of, huh, yeah. I'm not finding much by way of meaning and purpose in my life. This is pretty much of a dredge and so on in my daily activities. So that's where that one comes from.

Jim Brangenberg: I think a lot of people struggle with the joy thing though. They equate joy and happiness together. But that's not really true though, is it?

Bruce Bruinsma: No, it definitely is not. Matter of fact, when when you get a copy of my book that'll be coming out, I spent a lot of time identifying those differences and what that is and how that plays out in our, in our daily life.

Now, the third one is I am usually agitated and somewhat depressed during the day. I tell you, I look out over audiences and I see some folks that, man, I don't know how it's four o'clock in the afternoon or at six o'clock at night, and they just look unhappy. They just look agitated, like why is the world the way it is and it's not fair. And so they're living that life and that's not the life of a Christ follower that we have available to us. So "I'm usually agitated and somewhat depressed during the day."

 What kind of goes along with that is that, when that is true in your life, then when you meet other people, then you put on that mask and you put on that face and you say, how are you doing? Oh, I'm doing great. It's wonderful. Horse pucky. You're not either. And so let's find out what's true.

Jim Brangenberg: Remember, if somebody tells you, Bruce, that they're fine, remember what you're supposed to say. Really? Fine? Freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional? Really? How are you really doing? You have to ask that.

Bruce Bruinsma: And what's interesting is I think for many of us, those are the conversations that take place in the entry to the church. When you come in or after the service and you're having a cup of coffee or you're standing around talking and how you doing? Oh, great. Maybe not. And so to realize that I think there are more lies told in the entry to a church than there are any other place.

Jim Brangenberg: That's terrible. All right. Talk to me about the kindness question. What's the kindness question? Or not kindness, peace. And obviously we had love, joy, peace patience. Oh, Bruce, we're not supposed to pray for patience.

Bruce Bruinsma: Yeah, that's for sure. I am often frustrated and impatient with circumstances and those around me. And so that's a, that's, unfortunately, I think that's a normal state for way too many, and impatience leads to that frustration and the anxiety and the rest of it that comes along with it and all of these, if, in fact, you're on the one or two side of the scale, the net result of that is going to be loneliness, And when that net result is loneliness, that leads to all kinds of things. And we've talked about that on here and we can talk about it some more. But the next one is intentional kindness is something I regularly practice or experience.

Jim Brangenberg: And when we come back in the third segment, we're going to deal with that intentional kindness question. You're listening to iRetire4Him. We'll be right back with segment two with Scott Couchenour. Hang on!

Jim Brangenberg: Hey, welcome back to iRetire4Him, and as we do in every second segment of every show we've ever done and this is the 116th episode, we always bring on somebody sharing their story of how God is helping them live out their life in their quote unquote retirement years. Maybe differently than what you're listening to or what you're living out.

And we want you to hear somebody else's story. Cause we're always inspired by people's stories. We've got Scott Couchenour here today, serving strong. com serving strong. com. He's here to talk about the fourth quarter, but Scott, my first question is this. You're retirement age, 59 going on 60, but you're not retired. Why?

Scott Couchenour: It dates back to working in the company my dad started. We designed and built churches across America. He incorporated 1970 and fast forward all the way to 2008 when the stock market took a nosedive. That was the beginning of the end of our family business. For the next five years, we struggled in sales and the board of directors elected me to become the CEO, moving from COO to CEO to reinvent our company. Which I did. We started to really get our bearings and we started to get hope, but it all centered on one project that had to start in June of 2015. We had 20 million in design that we were working toward. And this project would be the bridge to our future, the bridge to that 20 million. I got a call from the project manager, Steve, who I expected him to say, we got started. It was the middle of June.

Instead he said, are you sitting down? I said, why? He said, because apparently the pastor had been having an affair with the secretary and the news just came out and I don't know if you have ever been speeding and you look in the rear view and you notice there's a Police car hiding on the side and all of a sudden he flips the lights on and is right behind you and your stomach goes to your bowels and you say, Oh, no. 10x that and it won't come close to what I felt that moment.

We had to close the business after 44 years, 760 projects. And I was a 50 year old without a career. And that really changed everything for me. The proverbial death of my career. I also lost my identity because I had attached my identity to my career. And when my career was gone, my identity was gone. So for the next 18, 25 months, I struggled with who I was, not to mention what I was going to do next. And slowly but surely, through God's grace and his mercy and his guidance, and in spite of me trying to make things happen, he began to show me that what I had gone through could be redeemed.

And there was a resurrection of sorts, and now I am helping people. I'm the partner I wish I had in 2013. I would have been a lot more strategic. And now I'm looking at my friends who are all quote unquote doing the things that retirees do. They're stepping down there. They're dipping into their retirement funds. They're doing some traveling. But I am an accidental entrepreneur, doing a startup and that's why I'm not retired now. That's the logistics of why I'm not retired But I cannot imagine doing anything else for the rest of my life.

Jim Brangenberg: All right, so hang on to that thought. I don't want you to give it all away. All right You've been evaluating guys retiring, people retiring. What have you seen as an affliction, a common affliction amongst Christian retirees?

Scott Couchenour: It's primarily I'm giving up, I'm done. It's funny. We use in business, we talk about exit strategy, exit planning, right? As if we're going to exit our business. And what's implied but not really thought about is I'm going to exit my life. My career is going to be done. I'm handing it over to the next generation. I'm handing it over to the new owner. And so I'm done. And I think this comes back from years and years of this idea that there is one hill, when you turn 40 the saying goes Lordy, look who's 40 and there's always black balloons and you're over the hill.

As in there's one hill, but I would really encourage your listeners to get a book called From Strength to Strength, which illustrates that there are two types of intelligence. There's fluid intelligence, which is in our early years and begins to wane in mid thirties. But then there's a second intelligence called crystallized intelligence that begins to grow and grow. And research is showing that the brain and the plasticity of the brain indicates that we never stop learning.

So I think the affliction is we've given in to the lie that once we reach a peak in our life, somewhere in the forties, fifties, that we begin to slowly decline and we continue to decline and decline. And I see this horrible thing where people have stopped living long before they're buried and they've given up, gone to the sidelines. They're saying, I've done my work. I've done my thing. It's over. I'm going to let the young people take over. And that's horrible.

Jim Brangenberg: It is. Bruce?

Bruce Bruinsma: There's another piece that goes along with that too. It's such a great insight, but it's, "I am now owed leisure" and leisure becomes then my meaning and purpose, and there's not meaning and purpose in leisure. And so you've got 30 years of trying to convince yourself that's something that is not true is true, and that it has meaning and purpose and that your life goes from there and it's insidious. And and i'm afraid the evil one is is so happy.

Jim Brangenberg: Yeah, I'm pretty sure the evil one was working with teddy roosevelt, theodore roosevelt when he set into place the this whole social security plan. Because for the last almost 90 years has told people when I hit 65 i'm done and I get to go and have fun but when they said it people were only living to 63, and now people are living to 93 and 103.

All right, Scott, you've got an organization called serving strong. com. What's that all about?

Scott Couchenour: That is all about helping you strategize your fourth quarter by getting you in touch with your core values, your gifts, your strengths, doing an inventory of everything that you've accumulated in your 50 plus years, and determining what is the recipe for those ingredients. And we end up creating a strategic planning document. A lot of people I work with in business, they understand strategic planning and execution on the business side. That's pretty standard. Not many people think of it in terms of a personal side, the personal strategic plan.

What is my purpose statement? What is my vision for if I'm true to my purpose over the next 20-30 years in this fourth quarter, what does my world look like? What does my life look like? And then my mission statement. How am I going to get there? There is no better reason to pursue a purpose than in your fourth quarter.

And I'll tell you, here's my hypothesis. My theory is that the fourth quarter, we can make a greater impact in the fourth quarter than we could ever make in all previous three quarters combined. And for two reasons, many reasons, but two primary reasons. Number one, we have a wealth of experience and that gives us a lot of wisdom and we can tap into that. And I'm surprised at how many people don't tap into their story and milk out the rich wisdom that comes from the experience, the failures, the successes that they have accumulated.

That's number one. Number two, there's this idea of being awakened to mortality. And so that gives us a sense of urgency. So when you can combine a wealth of experience with a sense of urgency, and you combine those two, you can do more in your fourth quarter than you ever have done in the past.

Bruce Bruinsma: Preach it, brother! That's a hundred percent.

Jim Brangenberg: Bruce, now you can see why I wanted Scott on here. I didn't get a chance to prep Bruce today before we interview Scott, but these guys need to have a conversation offline. Scott, I wanted to hear from you. You've identified six hallmarks of a fourth quarter strategic plan. Are you willing to hang around for our next podcast to give us those six hallmarks?

Scott Couchenour: Absolutely. Happy to.

Jim Brangenberg: All right. You're listening to iRetire4Him with your host Jim Brangenberg and Bruce Bruinsma from the Retirement Reformation. We're going to be right back with more of our conversation on the evaluative questions we need to ask ourselves and on our next podcast, we'll hear the second part of this interview with Scott Couchenour about those six hallmarks of the fourth quarter strategic plan. Hang on for just a second.

Jim Brangenberg: Hey, welcome back to iRetire4Him. Great conversation with Scott Couchenour. Bruce, I want to jump back where you were just getting ready to introduce question number five, which was about kindness when I cut you off, we had to go to break.

Bruce Bruinsma: Let's go back to that one because it's an important question. And the first two words give are really the key. Intentional kindness. Not just kindness, but intentional kindness is something I regularly practice or experience. Now, I don't know about our audience, but this is one that I gotta continually ask myself and work on. When there's a situation there is my response to it one of kindness? Or is my response one of impatience? Or how stupid could you be? Or any of those kinds of answers? Or that's really dumb? Does my spirit in my soul reach out to the circumstance and am I expressing the kindness of Jesus and demonstrating that in what I do?

I have a friend at our church. And I lost his wife about a year ago. Gone through some nasty physical things: had a knee replaced and a hip replaced and a shoulder replaced.

Jim Brangenberg: Oh my, he's bionic.

 (laughter)

Bruce Bruinsma: Yeah, he's bionic. Every Sunday morning he's at the front door welcoming people. Last Sunday morning we had a mixture of snow and rain, it was slush. And it was just nasty. And so as I pulled up and let Judy off at church and went and parked the car and came back, there was my friend Bill with a broom and a squeegee pushing that snow and that stuff off the front way so that people could come in.

He didn't have to do that. My goodness gracious, he's in his 70s. He's bionic. He's got every reason in the world to go sit in the back row and be grumpy. And in fact, he shows kindness by his actions. That might not be the way that I would show kindness, but in fact, we all have those ways. So "intentional kindness is something that I regularly practice or experience."

Question number six: I am primarily focused on myself and my issues and my needs. As we get older, those physical needs and the emotional and all the rest of them become heightened and accelerated. And as in our very humanness, we focus on what it is that I need, or why isn't this happening for me, or, why is the food where I'm living so rotten? Or whatever it may be. But I'm all focused on me, and that's all part of that shrinkage that we talk about, and so on.

And so I'm primarily focused on myself, and that's where the loneliness then comes from. And that's where the depression comes from, and the anxiety, and so on and so forth.

Jim Brangenberg: Yeah, but you're all focused on yourself. That depression just gets overwhelming.

Bruce Bruinsma: No, you're just focused on yourself. Why don't my kids come see me more often? Why don't? Why don't? Why don't? Why don't? Why don't? And there's a key one.

The next one is faithfulness plays a small role in my thinking about retirement. So what in the world is faithfulness mean to you? What are you being faithful to? Are you being faithful to yourself? Are you being faithful to the commandment of Jesus? Are you being faithful to what he commands us to do? And so faithfulness, if it plays a small role, and so you get, this one is may take a little reflection to be able to say, where in there am I a one or am I a 10 or am I stuck in the middle at four or five somewhere? So "faithfulness plays a small role in my thinking about retirement."

And then moving on: I believe my rights are the most important thing for me to protect. Let me say that again. I believe my rights are the most important thing for me to protect. And when we get engaged in sometimes political conversations and others, it's all about my rights. They're trying to take whatever it is away. And they can't do that. And I have a right to be, I have a right to be happy. Oh, here's one how could they take my music away?

Jim Brangenberg: Oh, now Bruce, come on. You're lighting fires now.

Bruce Bruinsma: I am. And it's my right that I be able to listen to old fashioned hymns. And that's what I like. And that's what I should have. And all these young whippersnappers are putting together these guitars and drums and oh my gosh, what am I doing? So those are my rights. And again, that plays itself out in so many different arenas.

Jim Brangenberg: But you're relating that to gentleness. Tie that into me because that's the gentleness part of the fruit of the spirit. How do you relate that?

Bruce Bruinsma: When in fact you are demanding your rights, you're not going to be very gentle. You're going to be a pain in the tail and you're going to be somewhat nasty. Or, as we say, grumpy. And so when we're grumpy, that fruit of the spirit isn't anywhere to be seen. So it's not much of a model to our grandchildren. It's not much of a model to other Christians. Certainly not much of a model to those who are serving us, for example, in a restaurant. Wherever it may be.

Jim Brangenberg: How about that final one? The one that relates to self-control. How about that final one?

Bruce Bruinsma: My emotions are the most powerful drivers of my actions and responses. My emotions are the drivers. I'm so mad! They can't! I'm not going to let them! They're trying to! Those are all the emotional drivers that then are reflected in our words, our deeds, and the gentleness of our soul.

Jim Brangenberg: That self control in our actions. And what's really the overall conversation about today is that when we're alive, God's not done with us yet. There's so much more refining of our spirit that can be done. And the closer we get to the Lord, the more we work on things specifically, like we've just talked about, those nine questions we need to be asking.

But Bruce, if you meet a senior, somebody that's retired, 55 plus, that's asking themselves these questions on a regular basis, let's say weekly or monthly, how do you see them differently as we close out the show today? How do you see them acting and experiencing retirement differently than somebody who may not be asking those questions?

Bruce Bruinsma: Number one it's the signal that they are open to God's Spirit speaking to them, entering in them, and acting through them. Someone who's not asking these kinds of questions is, again, focused on themselves, and the results of that are generally not good, whereas the results, when we care for others and we can express that to others, and we're open to input.

And one of the questions that, and we'll talk about this in our next podcast, when you ask the question, when someone says something to you that you don't understand, or you don't even agree with, and you, instead of telling them that you ask them what do you mean by that? There's a question that opens the door to relationship, to input, and to the opportunity to then to be able to share what God means in that circumstance that otherwise we'd miss.

Jim Brangenberg: To summarize, somebody who's asking these questions is going to experience God in their retirement. And somebody who's not is likely to experience all that the world has to offer. For what was that grumpy old men? They made a movie about that I think. Bruce, great questions. I'm so glad that you've given us this evaluation. Are these forms going to be available online or they just can be available at the oxygen for life or retirement voices kind of events?

Bruce Bruinsma: No, if you'll just send an email to her, put a note on our website, we'd be happy to send you a PDF of these. And I think the conversation we had in our prior podcast about why ask questions, these evaluative ones and the ones we'll talk about as reflective of the next ones would be wonderful conversations for your small group, or your church class, or a Sunday school class, or maybe even a family reunion.

Jim Brangenberg: Wow, that's a great idea. Thanks Bruce. I really appreciate the conversation.

Again, part two of a three part series. Really good. Asking why are we asking questions in retirement? What should we be asking? Those are the evaluative questions. Next up on the next podcast, the reflective questions!

You've been listening to iRetire4Him, the voice and resource of the Retirement Reformation with your host, Jim Brangenberg and Retirement Reformations very own founder, Bruce Bruinsma. Make sure you check us out online and get all these resources online at retirementreformation. org We're Christ followers enjoying God's best on our way from retirement to reformation, so we can ultimately say iRetire4Him!