The Spirit of Retirement: Creating a Life of Meaning and Personal Growth - Hardcover

Autry, James A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0761563539 ISBN 13: 9780761563532

Publisher: Prima Lifestyles, 2002

Synopsis

Your retirement years should be the best of your life. Free from the burden of making a living, in front of you lies an opportunity for personal development and a time for spiritual growth. These are your years; it is up to you to embrace them and ensure that you enjoy an enriching journey.
The Spirit of Retirement is your guiding light to creating and sustaining the post-work life you have always envisioned. Bestselling author and retired Fortune 500 executive James A. Autry illuminates a fulfilling path of meaningful endeavors, healthful reflections, and positive outlooks that will help make these years your most treasured. This engaging book highlights many important aspects of your new life, including:
·Preparing for the transition
·Determining who you want to be for the rest of your life and how to get there
·Reconnecting with those you love, appreciating your roots, and reinvigorating friendships
·Allowing time to develop your inner self
·Plus many other valuable insights
Included are moving anecdotes from people whose retirement years are filled with beauty, deep meaning, and purpose. Their stories illustrate the good life and special time that retirement should be and what it can be for you when you follow the guidance and apply the principles presented in this book.

About this title

About the Author

James A. Autry retired from his position as president of Meredith Corporation to pursue a life of speaking, consulting, and writing. He is the author of several top-selling books, including The Servant Leader, and lives in Iowa.

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Spirit of Retirement:
"Jim Autry gets to the heart of the matter with The Spirit of Retirement. Combining a poet's understanding with down-home common sense, he gives us more than a manual for the later years. He offers a rich, full life." — Roger Rosenblatt, essayist and frequent commentator on PBS
"Jim Autry's book is as much a guide to living well as retiring well. Reading his ideas and inspiring tales of others facing or experiencing retirement makes one feel less lonely." — Warren Bennis, distinguished professor of business at University of Southern California and coauthor of Geeks and Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders
"Through Autry's great gift for making the stories of real people come alive, he has created a book that is inspiring and hopeful, yet immensely practical and helpful. We are bombarded daily with financial advice for planning our retirement, but we need Autry's wise voice for the far greater task of being our fullest and truest selves during our retirement years." — C. Michael Thompson, executive development consultant and author of The Congruent Life: Following the Inward Path to Fulfilling Work and Inspired Leadership
"The Spirit of Retirement is a powerful and persuasive book—an inspiring look at the changing attitudes toward retirement. James Autry charts new territory in this engaging look at the nature of spirit, creativity, and developing a purposeful life. You owe it to yourself to read this book." — Larry C. Spears, CEO, the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership and author of Focus on Leadership: Servant-Leadership for the 21st Century
"Don't wait until you're 50 to read this book. James Autry has packaged a gift for each of us—the gift of the rest of our lives. I read this book because I needed it and didn't know it. I had zero interest in retirement. I didn't want to think about it, read about it, or write about it. The Spirit of Retirement has changed all that for me." — John Mack Carter, former president, Hearst Magazine Enterprises

From the Inside Flap

Your retirement years should be the best of your life. Free from the burden of making a living, in front of you lies an opportunity for personal development and a time for spiritual growth. These are <i>your</i> years; it is up to you to embrace them and ensure that you enjoy an enriching journey.<br><i>The Spirit of Retirement</i> is your guiding light to creating and sustaining the post-work life you have always envisioned. Bestselling author and retired Fortune 500 executive James A. Autry illuminates a fulfilling path of meaningful endeavors, healthful reflections, and positive outlooks that will help make these years your most treasured. This engaging book highlights many important aspects of your new life, including:<br>·Preparing for the transition <br>·Determining who you want to be for the rest of your life and how to get there <br>·Reconnecting with those you love, appreciating your roots, and reinvigorating friendships <br>·Allowing time to develop your inner self <br>·Plus many other valuable insights<br>Included are moving anecdotes from people whose retirement years are filled with beauty, deep meaning, and purpose. Their stories illustrate the good life and special time that retirement should be and what it can be for you when you follow the guidance and apply the principles presented in this book.

Reviews

For some people, the word "retirement" evokes images of farewell parties, vacations, golf games and, at long last, real progress on oft-postponed household projects. But according to Autry (Love and Profit), who once served as the president of a large corporation and is now a public speaker and consultant, the intial euphoria soon wears off, leaving the retiree with a hard realization: "For the first time in my life I don't have a job." In this compact, inspiring book, Autry insists that retirement is actually an opportunity for people to "stop doing and concentrate on being." To that end, he shares stories about retirees who made successful transitions to retirement and juxtaposes these anecdotes with questions and exercises for readers. Retirement is a time for changing one's approach to life, reinvigorating friendships, serving the community, finding nature and expressing one's inner creativity, explains the author, and his book-alternately pragmatic and spiritual-should serve disillusioned retirees well.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Koenig explores the spiritual and developmental aspects of retirement from a Christian perspective, noting that people underestimate how difficult it is to switch from the working world to "the land of no boss." A solid plan for retirement, will provide happiness and a seamless transition from one's career. Far from being the end of one's life, retirement should instead be seen cheerfully as that "last one-third of life that no longer has the restrictions of the first two-thirds." Autry, a former Fortune 500 executive, champions the notion that living healthily, volunteering, and growing spiritually in retirement "can become a liberating path toward a life of opportunity and personal and spiritual growth." An overarching focus on connecting with the people who love and need you, with nature, and with your inner self permeates his book. Offering heart and authoritative how-to advice, Autry's book is recommended for public libraries.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prima Lifestyles
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0761563539
• ISBN 13: 9780761563532
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304