What I find most challenging about coaching fellow baby boomers preparing for retirement is their belief they have plenty of time left in their lives. As a result, they avoid tackling tough issues like not enough savings for retirement or healing broken relationships. In coaching sessions I often hear statements like “I’ve got years left to deal with that.” But what if you don’t?

A spate of recent deaths in my family and circle of friends serves as a reminder that there is no promise of tomorrow. “Today is a gift. That’s why they call it the present.” may be a cliché but is still the truth. Today is a gift.

A health scare, an accident, or the death of someone close to us may prompt us to promise to change our behavior and make things right in our lives. Yet, in a very short period of time most of us go right back to our bad habits. Why is that?

It is easy to over commit, not hold ourselves accountable, or be ambivalent about change. Value Exchange Dynamics, a business model developed by Darylle Dennis, distills the resolution of this conundrum into a simple truism: commitment equals results. If you’re not getting the results you want, look at your level of commitment. How do you increase your level of commitment? Practice keeping your word to yourself.

Most of us keep our word to others because we don’t want to disappoint them. But we often don’t keep our word to ourselves because we are already disappointed by our actions and in us.

Coaching is a great way to increase your chances of success in both keeping your word to yourself and for preparing for retirement. Making a change in any phase of life is difficult. Knowing the changes and challenges that accompany transitioning from working to not working and having specific steps to reach measurable goals is a key benefit of retirement readiness coaching.

If you knew you were going to die next week, how would you spend your time? To whom would you make a call and apologize? What would you want to accomplish before you were gone? Where would you visit? The answers to these questions should be incorporated into your plans for retirement. Identifying the things that are important to us, righting wrongs, and taking action are ways to lessen our regrets in life.

Fortunately, most of us have longer than one week to live. But remember, time waits for no one. 
For more retirement planning ideas and inspiration, please stop by our What’s Next for Boomers? Life Planning Center or contact us.