iRetire4Him Show 117: Let's Reflect

Jim Brangenberg: Did you know that when you retire your calling doesn't retire? Your calling is a lifetime calling and God wants you to get the very best out of your retirement. You've tuned in to iRetire4Him, the voice and resource of the Retirement Reformation, online at Retirement Reformation. org. We are dedicated to you, the retiree who loves Jesus and wants purpose, meaning, and joy in all of your days, especially the ones ahead of you in your retirement.

Bruce Bruinsma joins us today, the founder of the Retirement Reformation, and he's here to encourage and walk with you through retirement. Then i'm your host Jim Brangenberg. Check us out online at Retirement Reformation dot org, Retirement Reformation dot org. And please check us out online facebook Retirement Reformation.

Do you ever ask 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? Questions like these to evaluate where you're at in retirement and reflect on what God is doing in your retirement are questions we need to be asking so that we can experience the most that God has for us in this final stage of life. Bruce Bruinsma here to share his favorite nine questions as he reflects on his retirement. Bruce, welcome back to iRetire4Him.

Bruce Bruinsma: Thanks, Jim. This has been a good series. And so in the last podcast, we talked about the evaluative, so let me just spend a moment and explain about the difference between an evaluation and a reflection.

Okay. Evaluation asks the question, where am I today? And the goal is to then pinpoint areas that in fact may need support or additional research, additional prayer, whatever it may be. And so the questions that we dealt with in the last podcast were where am I? We're rating ourselves. The questions we're going to deal with today come from the same issues of the fruit of the spirit, but that we come up are reflective ones about, huh? Maybe where should I be going? So what is where am I now? And these reflective ones are more, huh? I wonder if there's changes that need to be made. I wonder if there is more that I'm missing. I wonder if there is something else for me to reflect on and so these reflective questions have that kind of a connotation to them, where the evaluative ones were, where am I today?

Jim Brangenberg: But these questions, basically what you just said, hinge on the very fact that we can change. But I thought you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

Bruce Bruinsma: Oh, yes, you can. I'm a great example of that. If this old dog couldn't learn new tricks, man, it'd be a pretty, pretty dull life and one that had no growth to it or no meaning and purpose and excitement. But learning new tricks or learning new approaches or different ways that God would have us respond to different circumstances to really reflect on that and then be able to do it.

I have to think that in Jesus, when the disciples would ask him questions, and he'd come up with his different answers or his different soliloquies or his different parables, I got to believe that when he took off to go pray somewhere and the disciples were around the campfire, they had to be saying to themselves, wow, he really nailed us on that one. I need to think about that some more. And they would have a dialogue, a conversation, a reflection on what does that mean and how does that play itself out in our lives? And so I think we, in that way, we need to be disciples.

Jim Brangenberg: So what's that first question you want us to start asking ourselves?

Bruce Bruinsma: So here's the question, and I'm asking it of myself, and I put it in the " you" sense. But how do you, or how do I express love to those around me, and how have others shown love to me during retirement? And then how do you wish they would?

And so this issue of how do I show love? And then how do I receive love? And here's the really the subtle question that's there. Is there any difference between the love that I give or receive during my working years and now during my quote unquote retired years? I would suggest there perhaps are some differences that are worth reflecting on and applying, both in giving and receiving.

Jim Brangenberg: And I'm going to suggest that everybody, if you're not really sure how you should be receiving love or how you best receive love, go out to five love languages. com, five love languages. com. It's a number 5. And take the test and identify your love languages and identify the love languages of your spouse that you're hanging out with all day long, or your best friend that you're hanging out with. So you can give and receive love the most effective way.

All right, Bruce, the second question you said, what activities or aspects of my daily life bring me the most joy now that I'm retired? Why am I asking that question?

Bruce Bruinsma: Things are a lot different. Maybe while during your career, the thing that brought you joy was that the freeway was clear and you were able to buzz to work in about 20 minutes rather than an hour and a half. That could have brought you real joy. That's not your circumstance today. And so what are these things that have changed or that are now available because you have time, you have resources and you have experience with you and your spouse or you and your friends that that you didn't have before?

And again, I think the joy that you can receive during retirement is quite different than the joy that you receive when you got an attaboy from your boss.

Jim Brangenberg: What's question number three?

Bruce Bruinsma: Where do you find peace in your life? And part of that is, is there any part of your life that you do find peace? And do you even know what in the world that is? So where do you find peace in your life? And are there specific places, activities, or routines that you contribute to your feeling at peace? I know for me, it's, when the weather gets a little bit better and I'm able to sit on my back porch and listen to the birds and have a glass of lemonade and talk with Judy And look at the trees in the forest where I live.

Oh, wow. To be able to have the flexibility to be able to do that gives me peace. At the same time, when I'm with our small group, and as a group we come together and identify something new or different that we could do together or individually, that would reflect Christ. And it's just, that comes over you. Oh man, I think we got it. I think we got it. That feels so good and so many of us are so tense all the time that we never find or feel that peace. Or when you pick up your great grandson and you hold them close. Oh my goodness. What a feeling!

Jim Brangenberg: Yeah. When we come back, we've got a great second segment interview and then a third segment. We'll finish up the remaining six questions, Reflective questions, things that we should be asking ourselves to peer and say Lord, help me to see the reality of what my retirement looks like so that I can make some changes, some adjustments, so that I can flourish more in my retirement. You're listening to iRetire4Him. We'll be right back!

Jim Brangenberg: Hey, welcome back to iRetire4Him. As we promised, we brought Scott Couchenour back so we can hear more about serving strong. com, serving strong. com. Scott, we were talking about the strategic plan you're doing for people, a fourth quarter strategic plan. And I know that when we first talked, you talked about the six hallmarks of a fourth quarter strategic plan. And what you said right before we left on our last podcast, you said, we've got the potential to make a bigger impact on our fourth quarter than compared to the rest of our entire lives. That's a powerful statement. And Bruce was like, yes, amen, brother. Let's preach it. But we ran out of time.

So I wanted to bring you back and capture those six hallmarks of fourth quarter strategic plan. Can you run through those fairly quickly?

Scott Couchenour: Absolutely. So imagine in your mind the picture of a star and then the very center I call being spiritually anchored, what spiritually anchored means to you, and it's in the center because it'll touch all five of the other points. So that's number one. The top point is being physically fit. What does it mean to be physically fit? The two top points on either side would represent being relationally rich, And the other one is being emotionally healthy.

And then the bottom two points are being vocationally aligned and financially free. Now, let me go to vocationally aligned for a moment. When I think of vocation, I don't necessarily think what you're pulling a W2 income out of, or a 1099 income. It is whatever you put your time and energy and attention to.

So as we go through the stages of life, we may need to do some alignment with what we give our time and attention to, and that's vocational alignment. Think of these like the six parts, they're like parts of a body. They each do their own thing, but they are interrelated, so that if one suffers, the others will suffer to some degree.

When we improve on one of them, the others improve to some degree. Which is the reason why I think being spiritually anchored is in the center, because that Single hallmark impacts all of the other hallmarks like no other hallmark. And you can, there's a coaching question I start with when I work with clients, and that is to get them started on this framework. And that is for you to consider yourself spiritually anchored, what three things need to be consistently present in your life and that gets the creative juices flowing?

And you do that for all six hallmarks and so that begins the process of developing a definition of how we believe that God has uniquely gifted us and designed us in our fourth quarter and then now with that definition of those six hallmarks, we can use it as an assessment tool. We can use it as a benchmarking tool so that we can begin to strategize our way to a, an ideal state in all six hallmarks. So it becomes a framework for our life.

Bruce Bruinsma: That is so powerful. I just love that. I love the way that the term of relationally rich, I don't think that was a term that I've heard before, but I really, that grabs that essence. And I really like it also realizing that there's at least three stages in retirement. They're not all the same. And so being able to replicate that approach that you've talked about as an entry point to each one of those stages and the slight changes that are going to come as a result of it is really powerful. So thank you for sharing that and I look forward to our further conversations. Jim, what else you got?

Jim Brangenberg: This is my final question. Scott, when you see retirees being unleashed with a fourth quarter strategic plan, what happens?

Scott Couchenour: I think we have a n amazing amount of wisdom, with feet. And I think we can speak to the younger congregation, the younger members of our congregations, the younger members of our family, the younger members of our society and our community. And we can speak into that and we can make bold and decisive action in our lives based on wisdom and based on intention.

When you get a bunch of retirees who are not only moving away from this " I'm giving up" kind of mentality, but " I'm still in the game," because fourth quarter doesn't, there's still time on the clock, right? This is when the game is won or lost. And so when you can corral a bunch of individuals who are tapping into their stories and creating wisdom and moving with that, making decisions, voting, participating in their churches, participating in their social communities, I think, we can turn the tide of a lot of societal and cultural ills.

Bruce Bruinsma: I'm with you, brother. Well said.

Jim Brangenberg: Bruce, any final questions for Scott?

Bruce Bruinsma: No, we probably have about another couple hours worth of conversation, but I think we'll take those gems that he laid out for us, and I love that centrality of where Jesus fits in the middle of everything that we do.

Jim Brangenberg: Scott Couchenour with ServingStrong. com. Thanks for being on iRetire4Him today.

Scott Couchenour: Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Bruce.

Jim Brangenberg: We'll be right back with more, finishing up our Reflective Questions on iRetire4Him.

Jim Brangenberg: Hey, welcome back to iRetire4Him, as we're talking about those reflective questions, the questions that we need to ask in order to just, it's just it's self reflection. Gosh, that was really hard to get out. I don't know why it was so hard to get out, Bruce. But when we look at those reflective questions, again, matching the evaluative questions going through the nine fruit of the spirit, now we're talking about reflective questions relating also to the fruit of the spirit.

You asked about patience and again, everybody's always freaked out about patience. Bruce, this is the fourth question in that reflective section. How has retirement changed your perspective on patience? Can you share a recent time when you had to be especially patient? I don't see a lot of retirees growing in their patience.

Bruce Bruinsma: No, I think I see it's too many of us growing in our impatience and all the things that come along with it. And so being able to be aware that is not only - the tremendous value that it has when, in fact, you are able to be patient, particularly if you're caring for a spouse, for example, and she or he's going through whatever difficult problems they are, and all of a sudden you're stuck in the house, or you're stuck with them, or you're having to clean up a mess or whatever it may be. And, all of your spirit wants to be, rather than expressing that love through kindness.

And so, the next question then deals with that, Jim: "what are some acts of kindness you have performed or received recently? And how do these moments impact your life?" And so there's two ways. I think we think that when someone is kind to us, boy, that's a good deal. And that feels really good. I will tell you when you extend kindness beyond your normal capacity, beyond your normal action, when you do that, you receive so much more than what it is you are giving. And so being able to reflect on that is, is good.

And so I'll tell you one of the ways that you can reflect on it is when you're with your grandchildren and to take one of these questions and talk about it with him or her or maybe your son or your daughter, or maybe a neighbor and say, I was listening to this podcast and they asked this question and it's worthy of reflection.

And so we we go to the next question, which is this: "in what ways do you contribute to the goodness around you?" Such as through volunteering, helping neighbors or others, or supporting friends or family. When we think of goodness we think of almost Pollyanna type things, but this one's got some real teeth to it. It's the contribute to the goodness of helping someone else. And when we do that, we return from inward and all the grumpiness to outward and the joy that comes as a result of the kindness and then the goodness that comes along with that.

Jim Brangenberg: But you use a very interesting word in that question, contribute. What ways do you contribute? So it's not about doing good things. You say contribute. Why did you use that word contribute? You never use words without purpose. Why contribute?

Bruce Bruinsma: I think contribute is a full action item that I'm bringing all of who I am to what is needed, not just a surface, not just something that is incidental, but I am bringing who I am who God has made me to be, able to address the needs of others. And when that is a contribution, it's not just a doing, but it's a contribution. A doing can be, you can pick up your socks. That's a doing, but making sure that your stuff is organized so your spouse doesn't have to do it, that's contributing to the goodness. I don't know if that's a good example.

Jim Brangenberg: When we use the word contribute, we're thinking of the word gift. You're giving a gift. You're contributing of something that you have, that you can give to somebody else. It's just a powerful word. Contribute's a big word.

All right. So then we jump to faithfulness, the fruit of the spirit faithfulness. How do you maintain faithfulness in your relationships and beliefs in retirement? Are there challenges you face in staying committed, maintain faithfulness? Talk to me about that.

Bruce Bruinsma: What God asks us to do is to be faithful. And when I'm focused on myself, my faithfulness fades. When I'm focused on others and some of the other challenges from the other questions that we have, my faithfulness grows. And so am I being faithful to what God has asked me to do? Am I being faithful to who it is that he wants me to be? Am I faithful in my relationships with my spouse or my neighbor or the difficult people in my life? But this whole idea of faithfulness. And we say in the Retirement Reformation, we are called to be faithful for a lifetime, the whole 30 or 40 years that we're talking about, and to be able to grow in that faithfulness and that understanding, what it means to reflect Jesus in all that we do.

Jim Brangenberg: I think so many of us miss that, the point that God is not so much interested in all the things we do. He wants us in our fullness. He just wants us. He wants us to learn how to abide, how to rest in him. And the outflow of that abiding and resting is this fruit automatically grows in us.

All right. Question number eight.

Bruce Bruinsma: "I believe my rights are the most important thing for me to protect." We talked a little bit about that.

Jim Brangenberg: No, we're on the reflective questions because it was how do you practice gentleness?

Bruce Bruinsma: Oh, I'm sorry.

Jim Brangenberg: No, it's fine. "How do you practice gentleness in your interactions with others, especially in difficult situations?" Which goes to that rights conversation we had when we were doing evaluative stuff.

Bruce Bruinsma: Yeah, exactly. The gentleness area for particularly... I'm about six, three and a half and I'm about 250. And for all my life, I've been a big guy. And when people see big guys, they often expect more. And also, and often in a self defensive kind of way, I think my gentleness was lacking. I use the size and the mental capacity to be whatever the opposite of gentle is and to be overbearing perhaps, or to be belittling rather than gentle, and to be able to come to a point to say that's not what God wants. That's not who he created me to be.

And so this whole idea of learning to be gentle has been a huge ongoing role for me. It's still ongoing. It doesn't stop. And so when I find myself ready to utter some words or to take some action that certainly would not be described by anyone as gentle, then the Holy Spirit clicks in my head and go, Bruce, remember that gentle is what Jesus was in the midst of his strength. So not to be weak, but to be gentle.

Jim Brangenberg: Yeah, I think Jesus was driving that point home when he nicknamed James and John the sons of thunder. Because they were, they were like bulls in the china shop, wherever they went. And he was trying to get that conversation going.

All right. So then talk to me about the final question. Question number nine, "what challenges in retirement require you to exercise self control? And how do you manage those situations?" Are you supposed to have self control in retirement?

Bruce Bruinsma: Yeah, you're supposed to have self control all the time. And those questions that we asked that dealt with the emotions, for example, self control is the act of being able to control your words, your deeds, your body posture, your action, all of those things in a way that reflects the fruits of the spirit that are listed up above. Without self control, in fact, you will not be able to either experience or be able to demonstrate the fruits of the spirit.

And so I really think self control is a big one. What's the opposite of self control? Flying off the handle is, would be a example. Showing exasperation would be another example. Putting someone else down whether you know them or not is an example. And so self control is what comes out of your mouth. What registers in your brain and how you exist and how you address an issue or issues that come in front of you.

Jim Brangenberg: Bruce, these nine reflective questions, if we ask these of ourselves on a regular basis, what kind of life do you think we'll experience in the final phase of our lives?

Bruce Bruinsma: I think it will help us to grow and mature. We say that one of the benefits of longevity is that we have the opportunity for growth. To be able to grow spiritually, to be able to grow emotionally to be able to grow in all the different ways that we have that opportunity to. And I think these are the questions, or some of the questions that will be the prompts to us to be able to identify the areas where growth needs to take place and will give us the pathway to be able to be on that growth pattern that will lead us to a closer relationship with Jesus and a more reflection of him to the world.

Jim Brangenberg: So powerful. I love this series! Really the questions we need to be asking in our retirement, why we should be asking them. And then we asked nine evaluative questions and ranked ourselves, give ourselves a metric to work against. And then we asked the reflective questions. Really kinds of questions that we should ask in our quiet time almost every day but certainly to be done on a monthly basis and maybe even ask our spouse to answer those questions about us. Talk about throwing the fire!

What a great series, Bruce. Thanks for bringing it to us. Bruce, the name of your book that's coming out that really highlights living out the fruit of the spirit in retirement is called... ?

Bruce Bruinsma: Walking in the Fruit of the Spirit.

Jim Brangenberg: Awesome. And it's coming out in June.

Bruce Bruinsma: At every age and life stage is the subline to that. So we're looking forward for that coming out, and this is a good intro for it actually. And you can go from there. Matter of fact, let me just add one more thought, Jim. Whether you're talking about the reflective questions or the evaluative ones, what a great way to put on your prayer list. Pray your way through each one of those and listen to what the spirit has to say to you. And I think that growth that we talk about will not only be a pipe dream, but it will be a reality.

Jim Brangenberg: That's a great one. Thanks, Bruce. You've been listening to iRetire4Him, the voice and resource of the Retirement Reformation with your host, Jim Brangenberg and Retirement Reformation's very own founder, Bruce Bruinsma. We're Christ followers enjoying God's best on our way from retirement to reformation so we can ultimately say iRetire4Him!