Nancy Schlossberg returns to the podcast to discuss three major components to help clients make sense out of the transitions they are experiencing in retirement.

So John is interesting in conversations that we have with financial professionals. I know that day in and day out, they’re having discussions with their clients about life transitions, whether it’s thinking about retiring or taking a new job, or downsizing their home or helping their family make big decisions. And obviously, there’s no right answer at any moment, and helping them frame that out can be such a challenge. And oftentimes they draw upon stories of other clients that have been in similar situations. And our guest today, Nancy Schlossberg, has so much experience and context in this, and it was so interesting to chat with her about the framework and research that she’s put together. I don’t know about you, but it made me think about just some of the life transitions that I’ve been through. John, I don’t know if during those conversations with Nancy, if it made you reflect on any life transitions that you’ve had recently and how you responded to them.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I don’t think in listening to Nancy how you can’t review some of the transitions, whether it’s moving, whether it’s, changes in family situations, whether it’s, you know, situations where you thought life was going to be horrible and it winds up being one of the best things that ever happened or vice versa. And I think when we talk to Nancy, we realize it’s not black and white, right? The right answer is somewhere in between. But as financial professionals, Julie, and you know this from all the teams that you’ve worked with over time is that although we don’t aim to be involved necessarily in these conversations, we get drawn into them because many times clients are our friends, right? And we want to help them not only financially, but even beyond that. And I think Nancy Schlossberg just has some terrific, stories and insights in terms of how to help with this.

Absolutely. She does. I learned so much from her today, and I’m so excited for our audience to listen in on what Nancy has to share with us today on life transitions.

So, Julie, why don’t you share a little bit about Nancy and why we invited her to be on the podcast?

Absolutely. For more than 50 years, Nancy Schlossberg has dedicated herself to helping others to grow and better themselves. As a distinguished educator and administrator in the field of counseling psychology for nearly four decades. The leader of a successful consulting firm, the author of ten self-help books, and a renowned speaker, speaker, lecturer, and motivator. Upon her retirement as a professor of counseling and personal service within the College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1996, after 22 years at the institution, Doctor Schlossberg was honored with the rank of Professor Emerita with a focus on adult transitions. Nancy’s expertise spans various life changes, including geographic moves, returning to school, job loss, divorce, and retirement. Her latest work focuses on retirement transition. This reflects her mission to guide people through life’s inevitable changes. Despite her significant expertise, Nancy faced her own challenges with transitioning into retirement, which illustrates that anyone can struggle with this transition.

Without further delay, let’s invite you all to listen to a conversation we recently have with Doctor Nancy Schlossberg.

Hi, I’m John.

And I’m Julie.

We’re the hosts of the Hartford Fund’s Human Centric Investing podcast.

Every other week, we’re talking with inspiring thought leaders to hear their best ideas for how you can transform your relationships with your clients.

Let’s go.

Nancy. Welcome to the Human Centric Investing podcast. We’re so excited to have you here with us today.

It’s great to be here.

Nancy. We’ve talked quite a bit in the past about life transitions, and many of the listeners of our podcast are financial professionals who oftentimes, although we’re not quote unquote, therapist, we seem to be drawn into the conversations and the life transitions that our clients experience. Because, yes, there are financial implications, but oftentimes it’s the emotional, transition that people are moving through of a change from one thing to another. Tell us how you began thinking and studying life transitions. And one thing I thought was particularly interesting, Nancy, is that you say it’s not always something that happens to us, but sometimes it’s about things that don’t happen to us that represent major transitions. So give us a little bit of background on life transitions and why Nancy Schlossberg took so much interest and began her study in this area.

Well, it started a long time ago. We were living in Washington, DC, which I loved. And I was working at Howard University then, and I was very happy with my life. I was married to my second to Steve work. Steve had an opportunity for a job that he could not turn down. And it would require moving to Detroit. I was not a happy camper. I was thrilled at the job because it was a really significant job. I knew that he had to take that job. I knew we had to move. I didn’t want to. So we moved to Detroit and it turned out I had a very good life there. I worked at Wayne, I. My children were born and everything was working out very well. But the good news was. That we were moving back to Washington again. Steve was moving back, for this job. For his job. Well. I moved back. I had a wonderful job. There was a job opening at the American Council on Education. They were looking for their first woman executive. I got hired for that job. My very dearest friend, the person I had met the first day I went to Barnard and who later introduced me to Steve, lived in Washington. So it should have been a piece of cake. And guess what? It wasn’t. I was discombobulated. I couldn’t get it together. I didn’t understand what my problem was because all the factors were in place. Well, I had a dear friend, Sue smock, who was the dean of one of the colleges at Wayne State, and I was visiting her in Detroit. I moved back to Washington, but I was visiting so in Detroit and she was a researcher, and I said, I can’t figure out why I’m not on cloud nine. So. So I remember we were sitting on her sofa. She said, well, let’s. We’re going to make a laundry list of all of the factors that go into making you happy or unhappy when you make a change. Well, the lips got very long. By this time I had I was still in Washington, and I had left UCLA and joined the faculty of the University of Maryland, where I stayed for 27 years and loved every day, every year, every bit of it. Well, I met with the measurement people and I said, I’ve got this laundry list. But what do I do with it? And I started doing studies. I’ll just tell you my first study. I thought, I’m going to study a very ordinary transition, something that everybody, as we all move. I’m sure you both have moved. Geographical moving is an ordinary transition. So I thought I’m going to look at that. And I’ll take some couples who were in the armed services where there’s the expectation of change, and compare them just with a couple of couples who aren’t in the armed forces. That was my first study. I’ll tell you one funny anecdote about it. I’m interviewing this one woman. Now we’re up into the 1970s. And she said, I’m not going to move anymore. I have followed him 14 times. I’m no longer moving. Well, in my head I knew it was the woman’s movement, right? It’s the 70s. She’s going to have her own life. And I had this whole scenario. Luckily, I was well trained and I knew that what I was thinking wasn’t necessarily the way her life was. I’d better find out from her. Hell, I remember saying. So tell me a little bit about why this time you’re not going to move again. She said, well, I’m having an affair. I can’t move again. So that was kind of unexpected. But. Anyway, I never published that. The study. But I did start studying. I ended that, and then I studied, clerical workers. Balancing work and family. I studied women returning to school, I studied retirement. Every time I would finish a transition study. I would say, that’s it. That’s the. No more. But I became addicted. I couldn’t stop myself. I was really fascinated with transitions. So there I have, my laundry list, which became variables. And so over the years, my transition model formed. Let me start with a definition, and then I’ll go in, we’ll have some more discussion and I’ll go into the other parts of the theory. A transition is an event like retirement or a nonevent like not being able to retire when you expected it because of finances or world events. So it’s an event. Like getting promoted or none of them. Like not getting the promoted, the promotion you wanted and expected. So it’s an event or a nonevent. The changes your life. I usually look at retirement changes your roles. You’re no longer a worker. It changes your relationships. You’ve left your work relationships, establishing new ones in the in the real world. Now in your new real world. So it changes your roles, relationships, your routines. I remember reading an article by a Wall Street Journal reporter whose office was changed, and she talked about how discombobulating that was. And you talk to people who just have little moves from one part of town to the other. They they stopped for coffee in a different place. Our routines are very important to us. So you’ve got roles, relationships, routines and our assumptions about the world. We think the world is going to stay the same. But you and I know it doesn’t. So we’ve got our definition. It’s either an event or non event that changes our life. That’s the first part. I’m going to stop for a minute to see if you have any question or comment.

I’m curious. Nancy. So we have to have a definition. Does this happen overnight? Is this something that. Yeah. Or does this a process that takes time and it evolves as I’m putting these pieces together, it seems to me like it would happen over a period of time. But it sounds like you’ve studied so many different people and so many different ages and roles and stages of life. Will you share with us what you found with those conversations and what similarities, what differences? But, you know, really, does this happen over a period of time, or does it really sort of happen suddenly and overnight?

Well, some some things do happen. In addition, when we’re looking at a transition, we are defining it as expected unexpected. We’re defining it as positive negative or neutral. So we have a sense, oh my God, this is horrible. When I went to Detroit I saw it as a negative. However, it turned out to be positive, but I defined it as a negative. When I moved back to Washington, it was a positive, but it took me a while to adjust to the positive. So yes, but let me tell you about one study I did that I think is relevant. Our department at the University of Maryland had a contract with NASA Space Flight Center, the Goddard plant that was right up the street from us. Not literally, but pretty close there because we had this contract. We knew that there was going to be a risk reduction in force. We also knew that they would be told right before Thanksgiving. My colleague and I. Interviewed every single person whose job was eliminated. That very the next day after they got the news and they said, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened. This is worse than a diagnosis of cancer. This is worse than you know. It was just mind boggling. Two people were happy out of the whole group. One was a man who cut grass, and he said he thought he could get a job and that at the airport, cutting grass. So he was not worried. Another was a top executive who said, oh, this is the push I need. I am so bored with my life. I’m bored with my wife. I’m bored with my job. This is the push I need. Other than those two people thought, as I said, it was worse than a diagnosis of cancer. Oh, well, we got a story. But was it the whole story? No. Six months later, we went back and really interviewed everyone. I was sure it would be even worse. I was wrong. They said things like, oh my gosh, we handled this. We can handle anything. I didn’t care whether they were low level or high level employees. To a person. They were really thrilled. Do you know why the most unusual thing happened? NASA’s Space Flight Center attached every person whose job was eliminated was somebody in HR who would see them through this period till they reestablished a new life. And that’s what happened. That kind of institutional support, which is quite rare and very expensive. So companies just can’t do it automatically. But it gave us the realization that if you interview somebody at one point in time. That’s just that one point in time. You have to keep interviewing them over time because their reactions are going to change from. I often use this in making speeches. I say to people, I’m going to tell you something. You’re not going to believe. You’re absolutely not going to believe me. You’re not going to believe that when I was 30 years old, I was divorced from my first husband and I was dating a man, and he came to my apartment. It was the weekend of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It came to my apartment to tell me that his psychiatrist told him he was not ready to get married. Now, what do you think happened? I was devastated. Oh, my God, I was rejected. It was terrible. How could this happen? However, you probably don’t remember this, but we used to have dial telephones and I. My finger work and I dialed my best friend, the one I mentioned before, and I said, you once mentioned that there was somebody you wanted me to meet and I’ve just been dumped. She said, well, come down to Washington. You’ll meet him, you’ll have a good time. I don’t know what, if anything, will happen. And that was my husband, Steve Schlossberg. So here, if you would interviewed me and wanted to write a book on transition the day I was jilted, you would get quite a different story than six months later when I was so glad I was jilted. And now marrying Steve Schlossberg, with whom I lived for almost 50 years. So you have to look at people over time. And that’s really my mantra, by the way, is today is not forever. So if things are going well, who knows? But if things are going badly, just remember today is not forever. So so far we’ve got the definition of then Nonevent changes your life. And it’s a process. Over time, your reactions change over time.

So, Nancy, let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question about that process. All the transitions you’ve studied, whether it was employment, maybe it was loss of a spouse through divorce or death or something like that. Maybe it was, transition to retirement. Are the coping mechanisms that people and the process that people experience. Is it is it kind of the same process, just a matter of how long it takes for the individual in the circumstance? Did you find commonalities in these transitions?

Well, I say this. Yes, I found commonalities. So you asked the question that takes me to the next part. If I were diagraming this, I’ve got this person with this transition over time. But what? Think for a minute, John. I’m sure you’ve had a number of transitions, both of you. Some you’ve handled well and some you maybe haven’t. Well, I doubt that you haven’t. I’m sure you both have handled them all perfectly, but.

I don’t think so.

You know, people who have.

So I’ve got a friend who’s sometimes.

Just asking right away.

Okay, so here you are. Here’s time to, process what makes the difference in how you handle them? It’s your support. It’s it’s your what I call your four as system. It’s like pillars holding you up. A lot will depend on your situation at the time of the transition. Let’s say I have a friend who has an opportunity for a terrific job. On the other hand, her son had this, cystic fibrosis, and at that point they were afraid to move. They had the doctors in place. And so. Even though she could have had a positive transition of a new job. She stopped herself because of her situation. So is your situation good or bad at the time of the transition? What kind of supports do you have, your personal supports and institutional supports? Very often companies aren’t going to spend much time giving you support, but some of them do have wellness programs and your friends. And in case you have other community activities, do you have enough supports? What about you as a person? Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Do you see the glass as half full or half empty? That makes a difference. And then last but not least, your coping strategies. I want to stop here because I want to spend a little time on coping strategies. But you get the picture, I think. Then you’ve got these. The balance of your supports to deficits at any given time makes the difference. If your situation is great, you’ve got a lot of supports. You’re an optimist. You’re going to handle it better, even if it’s a sad transition than if those things are not together. But probably the one you have most control over are which coping strategies you’re going to use. So let me tell you a story that illustrates it. This was way back when I had nothing to do with age when I was young, and I was working at the American Council of Education. I was to go to Denver and I told you, the Denver talk store. Oh, good. Okay. So. I wish to go to Denver to make a speech on the topic, which why women are not moving into college presidents. So I get to Denver. Go to the hotel. They never heard of me and they never heard of the American Council on Education. So I call the office and I say, I’m in Denver, but they don’t know anything about our meeting. And the woman on the phone said, Nancy, the meeting is in November, not October. Oh, yes.

That sounds like something Julie. Or I could do for sure.

Okay. All right, so I’m in Denver, so I hang up the phone and I call my husband, and I actually start to cry. He said, Nancy, pull yourself together. You cannot fall apart in Denver. Your book, Overwhelmed Coping with Life’s UPS and Downs, is about to be published. It would be bad for sales if you felt. So. So, I hang up the phone, and I haven’t written about this anyplace, but I know spending money helps. So I asked for the expensive restaurant across the. What’s the name of the one in Denver? The famous hotel. Whatever. And I get to that. I go to that hotel and I ask for the fancy restaurant, and the maitre d is about to seat me, and I say, I can’t sit down. I need a support system. And I told him what happened. He said, I’m ordering you a drink. I said, I don’t really drink. I certainly don’t drink at once. You said you do today. So I am sitting with this drink and I’m thinking to myself, is there anything in my book overwhelmed with. So this was because overwhelmed. The first edition came out the mid 80s. So we’re talking about the mid 80s. Is there anything in that book that really is helpful? And I remembered three pages, I thought. Okay. In the book. I had done a lot of research into coping strategies and most coping strategies. There’s thousands of them can be categorized into those you use to change your situation. Those you use to change the meaning of it, and those you use to relax and control your stress. So I thought, well, can I change this? No matter. Even if I had hired the most expensive lawyer in the world, I could not make October-November. I could not do that. So there’s no point to try to change that. Then I have to go to my next set of coping strategies. Can I change the meaning of it? And of course, I begin to think, look, I will have helped so many people who make a mistake on a lunch date, a dinner date. They’ll say, but at least it’s not as bad as Schlossberg did. Oh, it’s all relative. And furthermore, I’ll have an opening, a wonderful opening sentence when I come back in November. Which would be, you have never heard had a speaker more eager to speak to you. I even came a month thoroughly. So by the time by the time I finished this sort of drunken lunch, I figured it out. But then there was one missing. There’s another set of coping strategies that help you reduce your stress. So there’s a walking street in Denver and no cars. So I aerobically finished lunch, appropriately, walked up and down that in and out of stores, in and out of stores, reducing my stress. Take that as a as a model. Anytime you are dealing with something that is stressful. Ask yourself three questions. Can I change it? If so, how can I change the meaning of it? If so, what? And can I reduce my stress and relax? Those three questions can help you choose which coping strategy to use for your particular issue. Now I have to tell you one side story. I used to run a conference every year at Maryland, and I would bring in speakers I wanted to learn from. That’s how I kept my learning going. And one day I said, how many of you have been to these conferences before? Everybody raised their hand. I said, oh, darn, I can’t tell my story. Somebody said, that’s why we keep coming back. We want to hear this one word story. If it makes us feel good about all the mistakes we’ve made. So that gives you the model a person. A certain kind of transition. Some are bigger than others. Some are events, some are not. And then. And we cope differently for not events a little bit. Where are they in the process? Is it thinking about it? Is it at the beginning? Is it two years after? And what has given us the pillars, the supports that we need. And that’s it in a nutshell. A thousand years of studying. A lot of aggravation. And I can say it in five minutes.

Nancy, it’s interesting you mentioned that the the answers can change over time. So for financial professionals engaging with their clients, say their client is thinking about maybe selling their home and moving into a retirement community today. And they’re asking themselves the four S’s, and they’re not having an incredibly positive response today. You know, maybe the support system or their self or in their strategy, they’re not quite aligned. But just because the answer isn’t quite there today. Should the financial professional circle back on that question in a few months at their next meeting and continue to go through those for us? Because it sounds to me like from your research, we evolve as those things could potentially change in our lives.

Good point. Last night. I live in a retirement community. In fact, if you look at the picture behind me, that’s where I live. Last night there was a new resident and her husband who had moved into our floor. So a group of us. Got together and invited them to come over for a light supper. Well. Her husband is too sick. Could not come. He’s having terrible medical problems. She’s not in good shape. She said we should have moved here five years ago. Because they have moved in and they’re not going to be able to really enjoy. Enjoy it the way they should. Many years ago, I’ve been living in the retirement community, which is right in town, by the way. It’s in the five minutes from the theater and so forth. I’ve lived there nine years. So when I told my son and daughter that I was moving to a retirement community, they said, fine, someday, but you’re absolutely not ready. That’s not a good idea. I said, I know something about aging and I’m going to need it. It’s better for me to move when I have a few of my marbles left, so I’m going to do it anyway. And maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s too early. But I’m going to tell you I was right. But I see so often people who aren’t now financial planners are in a peculiar position. You’re not therapists, but what you do can be therapeutic. And yet you’re in a position where if you nag too much about moving. They were pushing somebody to change their assumptions about themselves. When they say, I’m not ready. They’re saying, I’m not old. I don’t need support. You’re pushing them to change their assumptions, and that’s not something you want to do, because you also could push them to leave you. If you push them too hard. So it’s a delicate question that you ask. How? What do you do? How do you help people? Think about the next move because they don’t want to be identified as old. They don’t want to be in a community where there are walkers and canes, and they don’t want to change their assumptions. You know, I mentioned the aging rebels, this group, we’re proud of our age. We’re rebels. You know, we’re not ashamed of our age. We we’re not ashamed of our wrinkles. I mean, I’m not crazy about them, I have to admit, but it’s not something that I’m going to kill myself over. So you’re in a delicate position, so blame it on somebody else. Have somebody write something and find something about readiness for your next for that transition. Get some authorities other than you because you do not want to be. You are there to be their support.

Hey, Nancy. Everybody, everybody listening to this podcast just got a perfect example. It’s the story you just told about when you determined you when you determined it was time to move into a senior community. Yet some family members would have said, not yet, but you came back and reaffirmed it was the right decision. And, Nancy, one thing I can share, having known you now for some time, is your ability to tell stories is something that the financial advisors listening can learn from, because it’s not necessarily opining on a situation. It’s telling a story that you’ve heard, that you observed that you lived through. It’s oftentimes those personal experiences that make so much of the difference. So I can’t thank you enough for sharing, sharing that perspective and really giving us a path to think about how, as you said, we’re not therapists, but we get brought into therapeutic situations. And one thing I just my last question for you, Nancy, because I’m fascinated by especially where you started your move to Detroit and then back to DC, it seems like it’s human nature to always view everything as black and white. This is going to be great, or this is going to be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. And sometimes it seems like as a financial professional, sometimes my job is to remind people that maybe there are positive things in what’s happening in this negative situation you find yourself in, or vice versa. Like you moving back to Washington, I know you’re viewing this very positively. Just be aware there can be challenges that come along with it. Sometimes we have to offset that because the right answer, I find, is usually somewhere in the middle. Would you say that’s accurate?

That is very wise. I mean, it is. We like black and white, we like clarity. But really ambiguity is what around us is never all perfect or all not perfect. And we grab on sometimes to definite things. So I think, I think financially, I think what you’re doing at Hertford, I cannot tell you how impressed I am is that you are focusing on some psychological issues. You don’t see the world as black and white. You see yourselves as really caring about the client. It’s not just about money, but you’re dealing with people who when, when the market goes down, their reactions. I’m sure your phone rings a lot when the market goes down. Am I right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that is what’s happening. What’s going to happen? We catastrophize we tend to catastrophize. And your job is a calming, you know, it’s looking at things over time and presenting a calmer, picture, of life to people. So I think you’re doing wonderful work.

Well, Nancy, we can’t thank you enough for joining us on this episode of the Human Centric Investing podcast. Thanks, as always, for sharing your wisdom and your stories. And, Nancy, we couldn’t be, we couldn’t be more thankful, than than then you sharing your time with us all today. Thanks so much.

Well. Thank you. I this is a you know, I’m a bit of the ham and I enjoy talking and I, I love telling stories, especially if the stories can be helpful. So thank you.

And for our listeners, if you would like more information on Nancy’s work, including a list of her books and articles, please feel free to visit her website at Transitions Through life.com. Nancy, thank you again today for your time and expertise.

Thank you.

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The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the guest who is not affiliated with Hartford Funds.