Transcript:

Intro (00:01):

Do you struggle with what it means to be successful in your retirement? Trust us, you're not alone. Welcome to the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. Here you'll go in depth with guidance point advisors, investment consultants, to hear stories about how retirees in Maine are navigating a successful retirement. Get insight into the inevitable challenges of aging, and define what a successful retirement looks like.

Ben Smith (00:26):

Welcome everyone to the Retirement Success and main podcast. My name is Ben Smith and I'm one of your co-hosts here on the show. Listeners, I hope you're doing well today. If you'd like to connect with us, you can always just email us at benSmith@guidancepointrs.com or find us on YouTube, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Just search Return to Success in Maine podcast, and you can find more of our shows there. And now I'd like to welcome the Abbott to Mike Costello. Curtis Wister. How are you doing today, Curtis?

Curtis Worcester (00:53):

I'm doing well, Ben. I'm doing well. How are you? I

Ben Smith (00:56):

Really good. We're recording in January, and it's cold here in Maine. It

Curtis Worcester (01:00):

Is cold.

Ben Smith (01:02):

We're getting some single digits, some negative numbers with wind chill. We're getting some snow now, finally. So it's good to be in the New England area and enjoying winter and days are getting longer now, so we like that. But, and of course, one thing that we've explored a lot in our show, especially for New Englanders, is especially in the winter, you're shut in. It's cold. You don't want to go outside and you get a significant challenge as we all age, is this concept of loneliness. And it doesn't always stem from being alone. It often comes from feeling unseen or disconnected, which I know is another theme of our aging cohort is they're surrounded by others at parties and they maybe don't connect as well with other family members. So it's a topic that many of us struggle with in silence, but it really doesn't have to be this way.

(01:57):

So our guest today is no stranger to the conversation. He's been an entrepreneur, coach, writer who's worked focused on helping people connect more deeply with themselves and others. And through his own experiences and insights he's developed tools to help us combat loneliness by fostering meaningful, fulfilling relationships. So from finding the courage to share our true selves to learning how to build communities that support us. Today's episode's going to focus on practical tools and strategy to help you feel seen, supported, and connected no matter where you are in life. So if you're ready to take a step forward, overcoming loneliness and creating deeper connections, stay tuned. This is a conversation you won't want to miss.

Curtis Worcester (02:36):

That's right, Ben. That's right. And you teed me up perfectly. There again, our guest today is a serial founder and ionist whose career spans leadership development, real estate education and startups. Currently, our guest runs a personality test company that's dedicated to helping people architect their lives and careers around what brings them the most. Our guest has a deep passion for empowering others to become their fullest selves through teaching, coaching, and writing. His work has reached millions of people worldwide with his articles and videos featured on platforms like inc.com, time, bbc. In the Huffington Post, in his own journey, he has explored the complexities of loneliness, connection and personal growth, developing powerful tools to help others foster meaningful relationships and overcome feelings of isolation. So with that introduction, please join me in a welcoming Brandon Lee to the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. Brandon, thanks so much for jumping on today.

Brandon Lee (03:39):

Yeah, thank you two for having me. It's great to be on and excited for the chat.

Ben Smith (03:42):

Yeah, Brandon, and again, I know we chatted a little bit before, and again, I think there's so many things that we could have been talking about in today's show, but when we kind of did that pre-chat and heard a little bit about loneliness and something that you've worked on and try to build an engineer, I was like, oh, that's the vein right there. That's something we had to go through, but we are going to get to that in a little bit. But first of course, we want to introduce our audience to you. So I know you've had a diverse and inspiring career from leadership development to founding companies. Can you just share a little bit about your personal journey and how you found your passion for helping people connect more deeply with themselves and others?

Brandon Lee (04:21):

So a little bit about my journey is that I dropped out of college and committed a version of cultural suicide. As an Asian American, there's a lot of plenty of stereotypes, but my parents definitely fit that stereotype very much. Yeah, you don't get the A then okay, brace for or a scold. And I was the youngest of three, and my brother and sister did very well academically. I was more the athlete in the family, so

(04:49):

Didn't do too well on that front. But I dropped out and I dropped out to work with churches and I did a lot of work in Christianity, ran a house church, taught about spirituality, faith development, leadership development and self-love, stuff like that. And then basically over the next decade, I spent time doing that. I spent time flipping houses. I spent time running an education company. I spent a few years in tech. So yeah, many, many, many different chapters even in just the short 10 years. But yeah, that's a little high level overview of the arc that I've had.

Curtis Worcester (05:24):

That's fantastic. I appreciate you sharing that with us and everybody tuning in. And I want to focus on something I just teased up there in your bio a little bit, right? Your writing and content, right? It's resonated with millions around the world. I just want to ask Brandon, what inspired you to explore the topic of loneliness and why do you think it's such an important issue to address today?

Brandon Lee (05:44):

So most of my writing, and also to answer the tail end of the previous question that I didn't actually answer, which is what made you want to decide to help more people? A lot of it just came out of when I was my first year of college. I remember feeling absolutely lost and clueless as my first year in college and facing the daunting life question of what am I supposed to do with my life? And feeling like I didn't have anyone to talk to. I didn't have a good relationship with my brother or sister at the time, and I didn't feel like I had anyone older than me that I could feel those questions with. So I remember sitting down my college campus and just feeling totally distraught. I felt like someone out there had answers to the life questions that I had, but I just didn't know who they were and I didn't know how to talk to them.

(06:31):

So I remember just feeling absolutely lost, trapped, and isolated all at the same time. And I remember thinking, this is the worst feeling in the world and I don't want to feel this ever again. And I remember the next thought after that was, what, one day I'm going to answer these questions and I'm going to have two choices. I can either let everyone else in society fend for themselves the way that I had to fend for myself, or I could maybe contribute to the solution a little. And in my mind that calculus was very obvious. I'm like, okay, I'm just going to do my best to figure out these answers and then do my best to pass down whatever I've learned. And that was the beginning of that journey. And so even early in my twenties, I started as I made progress on the answers to my big questions, I would start passing them on to guys and girls that are a year younger than me in school.

(07:19):

And then when it came to the writing, I started my writing mostly on Quora, which is a question answer platform. It's like the 2.0 version of Yahoo answers, and there are plenty of people all over the world on that. And they would ask similar kinds of questions about life. And so whenever I found a question that I felt my life experience spoke to, then I would write about it. So to get back to courtesy question specifically about loneliness, yeah, the moment I dropped out of college, I immediately felt lonely because you hear all my peers, all my peers were in college, every person in my extended family went to college. My entire network and upbringing, I did the unthinkable. So I basically had to figure that out for myself multiple times. And so I started writing about loneliness. I had already solved that part of my life twice. And so it just made sense of, hey, here's some of my life experience and hopefully it's helpful. And that was the original intention in writing. And I never intended to have millions read my writing. It just happened that way where I guess enough people resonated with it, shared it, upvoted it, commented on it that it got that kind of traction. Wow,

Ben Smith (08:35):

Very cool. And Brandon, I know from our conversation you've described yourself as a reinvention. So can you talk a little bit about what that means to you and how reinvention has played a role in your personal growth and relationships?

Brandon Lee (08:48):

Yeah. I've briefly hinted at, so all these transitions in my life so far, I've mostly just accepted that that's going to be a norm in my life and career. The trend is that every three to four years I change directions, and that's been consistent for a decade and a half. So it seems weird to just assume that all of a sudden I'm going to stop doing that. So that's where that comes from, where I've gotten very comfortable and friendly with the concept idea process of reinventing myself, where firstly it was a nonprofit, totally different world than real estate, which was my next thing, absolutely different world from the world of education that I went into absolutely different from the world of tech that I went into after. And now with the personally tasks that I'm building, there are some overlaps. So it's not entirely new, but there's similar principles. It's just a totally different industry. Even if I am using similar skills that I'm building on from my past, it's just a term that I've adopted that I've gotten very comfortable with. And at this point, I just expect that to be a part of my future. So that's how I relate to the term. And so very few people even use that term or identify with that. So I figured, yeah, this is a pretty unique point in my professional bio, so might as well stick in it.

Curtis Worcester (10:04):

No, that's fantastic. It was fantastic. I appreciate you letting us build a little background there. Like Ben mentioned for everybody kind of tuning in here today, obviously we do want to get into the main topic here of again, this idea of battling loneliness and really building connection. Again, a lot of our listeners are retirees or pre-retirees, and we're just trying to consistently move forward with that theme of, but one thing, Brandon, that you shared, I think it was on our pre-chat with Ben even you shared a powerful insight that loneliness isn't just about your physical isolation, it's also relational isolation. So can you just expand on that a little bit and why feeling seen is just so critical for having that connection?

Brandon Lee (10:49):

Yeah. So I can't speak as to what are the absolutes of how everyone and every human on the planet relates to this, but

(10:58):

From my experience, the first time I experienced this was actually when I was in high school where I grew up in church and I was part of the same youth group church community for basically my entire life up to that point. And I remember one time sitting at the back of the sanctuary, and my youth group was about 20, 30 people, and I knew most of these people for decade and decade and a half at that point. And I remember just pondering where it's like these people I've known for so long, but I don't feel like any of them actually know me.

(11:29):

And I remember feeling so surprised by that cognitive distance, how is it that they've known me for 20 years or 15 years at that point and they don't know some really core aspects of who I am, what I believe, what I think about myself, my deeper innermost thoughts. And I felt like that was a very strange thing to experience as a teenager. And I didn't, didn't know how to make sense of it at the time, but I think by the time I got into my twenties, I realized like, oh yeah, it's because no one actually knew me and I didn't have relationships in which that kind of connection and conversation was normalized, nor did I know how to create that. So at the time, I just felt like a victim in my circumstance and like, oh, maybe this is just what life is. But by the time I got into my twenties and experienced other kinds of relationships and gotten a lot more confidence and a lot more comfortable socially, I developed a lot more meaningful relationships where I have a lot of friends that know the darkest parts of my life, the lowest parts of my life from my past, my recent past, my teenage past, and everything in between.

(12:34):

And those have felt like the most meaningful, fulfilling relationships. And so when I have that contrast, I'm like, okay, yeah, I think at least for me, I can confidently say feeling seen is a very core part in my sense of feeling connected and feeling held by a community or just feeling grounded in a particular sense.

Ben Smith (12:55):

So Brandon, just kind of listening to that is you start thinking about of it starts getting to a level of trust and relationships. If I don't feel like I can trust you, if I give you some very sensitive personal information, if you go, Hey, my darkest fears or here's my concerns, or Hey, I want to brag about myself for a second and talk about, Hey, I just accomplished something. So it goes to this having a confidence that, hey, I'm putting trust in this relationship and you're asking for it reciprocated. And I know obviously there's a fear of judgment a lot of us have, which maybe is the stop gap of saying, Hey, I have a fear of judgment, so I'm not going to share my struggles. I'm not going to share these pieces. So I would imagine that that was probably what you were experiencing maybe early on in your life. So talk about how maybe just people and just translating that experience for you, how others maybe even retirees can overcome this fear of vulnerability and start opening up to others. Because again, what you just said is, Hey, I was able to build this, but especially if I've gone for 50, 60 years of my life and I've not shared things, how would you counsel someone to go about overcoming that fear and start opening up

Brandon Lee (14:18):

To answer that? I think it's worth noting a distinction of if we're talking about people that you've known for a long time, there could be a really good reason for you to not have that confidence to share vulnerable things like when you think to moments in that relationship where your friend basically absolutely makes fun of someone else for a particular aspect of their character or something that they're interested in. And so you have priors of like, yeah, yeah, maybe this person isn't that open and is not the safest person. So there's definitely real grounding in that sense. And then there's other context where it's like, yeah, if you're meeting someone for the first time, you don't have any priors in that person. And so that process might be a little different. But to answer the question, I think fundamentally it's about having concrete ways to gauge whether someone can handle that part of you or not.

(15:13):

And so at least when I was younger, I just thought, you know what? I want to talk about this so it, I'm a say that thing, I'm a say that part of me and basically drop the equivalent of a vulnerability bomb and hope that the fallout is okay, I didn't have much nuance or know any other way to deliver that. So at least my process now is basically instead of the concept of dropping a vulnerability bomb that's very, very intense. Well, why don't I start with something that's slightly vulnerable, at least slightly vulnerable for that relationship. So if I've known someone for say, 10 years and we've never ventured in a particular topic, and I want to talk more about that particular topic, then instead of saying the thing as straight up the way that I want to say it, kind of dance around it a little, start a few steps away from it.

(16:07):

And just as an example would be like if my mom or my parents would be a good example with my mom, I've never floated the idea for a long time about having friends that are gay. I grew up in a very conservative Christian environment, and in my mid twenties I made a friend that was gay, and we ended up living together with a group of a few other friends. So a way that I could have introduced that instead of shocking my mom and saying, Hey, mom, I live with my new friend and he's gay. That probably my mom would probably flip out. But if I just start having a random conversation about, Hey, mom, what do you think about gayness? And just having a conversation around it and give her a chance to process her thoughts externally, process, and then just raise a hypothetical. I could be like, oh, okay.

(16:57):

Oh, it looks cool, mom, you think about this, about gay is okay, interesting. So how would you feel if one of your kids became friends with someone who was gay? So I'm keeping it, obviously, it's almost like the whole, Hey, I'm asking for a friend kind of move. But that's a way to depersonalize it, keep it a little hypothetical and create some plausible am ambiguity around that situation. And it's a way to get your feet wet and get a gauge of, okay, how will this person respond? And yeah, the reality is my mom didn't respond very well, so I don't really talk about that kind of thing with her because proven herself to not respond well, and so therefore not a person that I want to share this part of my life with. And so that's a lesson learned, but that's much different than me dropping the bomb from the get go and then creating some relational fallout as a result of that. So that would be a concrete

Ben Smith (17:50):

Way. Yeah. So Brandon, I really like that because essentially what you're doing and that relational pattern of that communication pattern is you're creating fire exits along the way. Because if all of a sudden your mom saying, Hey, I'm really not reacting well from the get go, I don't even want to talk about someone that is gay, just as you said, you don't have the bomb that went off and now you're mad at me personally, but we're building towards something and I can feel like I can exit the conversation without damaging our relationship. You can start kind of probing, I guess, the parameters of what you can and cannot talk about by using that.

(18:24):

I really like that as a thought , one of the things that we've seen, and one conversation we had on our show was with a lady named Sarah Zeff Geber, and she was an expert in solo aging, so she didn't have kids, so she's aging. And she goes, the problem is that as I'm aging that look, my parents have passed, my siblings are not around, my friends passed away. So she kind of expressed to us one of the big things that she needed to to do where she didn't have kids to look after her as she's aging herself, she had to continue to invest in new friendships, and she had to keep building community. So I know that retirees just in general do this, that their workplace is kind of their community, that that's their friend group, they drop that off and they maybe have a very small percentage of the relationships they had previously. What would you give for advice? So again, I kind of use Sarah Z as the example about solo aging, but even retirees, what would you give advice to someone looking to form deeper connections at this stage of life? How do you invests over time and how do you continue to find new people that you can build as friends and community?

Brandon Lee (19:45):

So in my mind, this is not that dissimilar as any person deciding to move to a new city, for example. So I've basically done that multiple times where I basically had to hit a social reset. And so at least from hindsight, the way that I started when I didn't have any starting point was I just went on meetup.com. So looking for sites like meetup.com or Eventbrite and just going to events that are interesting to you, and that's as a very basic way to meet people, meet people that you've never met before. That is the intention of those websites is to help you find people with similar interests to meet each other. So that's a simple starting point, but from my experience, going to free events are not the highest signal way of meeting people that you might really resonate with. Usually I found those in maybe communities that have recurring meetups, that's one or paid communities where there's some barrier of entry where it's like you have to care a little bit extra to be a part of this group.

(20:48):

So those have been the two main mechanisms that I've met. A lot of the people that I call friends today is through one of those avenues of an avenue where there's a recurring touch point. So a monthly meeting, a weekly meeting, a way to build deeper and recurring touch points with people or paid communities where it's like the thing that is the north star that the community is about. You have to care enough about it, and that becomes the commonality factor that becomes the basis for friendship. So in my mind, for people in that kind situation is yeah, start with the free thing, go with Meetup Eventbrite, stuff like that. If you don't have a really clear starting point or if you already have clear interests, try looking for community-based things, versions of the thing that you're interested in. So if you're really into music, find some kind of digital or in-person community conversation point that they're really big fans of music.

(21:48):

Find an online forum of music nerds in a particular way. Facebook groups are immensely, I think, powerful for this at this point where there's so many people that there's limited groups for everything and the cost to join them is virtually free. At worst, it's just providing your email because you got to answer those questions or whatever. With chat GP nowadays and ai, you could three topics. What are some online communities or in-person communities in my particular area that I could check out that there's so many more tools at our disposal now to support this situation?

Ben Smith (22:27):

And Brandon, I'll add on. I think not only just going to those groups makes sense, but I could see where it's very natural. Like, Hey, I have a pretty full friend, friend group, so Brandon, I could see where I'm going to those meetings and I'm doing the meetups and I'm getting to the interest and I get a good group of people, I get community. But over time, if I stop going to those groups and I stop meeting new people that my circle starts dwindling because eventually people move away or things happen right in life that it feels kind of natural too, that you keep going to those things to keep invested, to keep reinvigorating, re-energizing that community base. Would you agree with that?

Brandon Lee (23:10):

I mean, there's ways I guess to recreate that that don't necessarily require you to continue to physically be present, but I think the effectiveness also depends on your personality. In my particular case, I'm nomadic, I travel a lot, so actually I'm not in the physical geography and I'm not able to do something like that. So for me, the way that I've maintained that is I have basically weekly recurring digital zoom interactions with my close friends, and usually these are in the form of coworking, in the form of doing normal, mundane life in the same zoom room. And that's my way for maintaining friendships because well, I can't be in Canada and Puerto Rico and San Francisco and various parts of the US all at the same time, and I'm not quite financially loaded enough to just fly there to develop those relationships. And I had imagine most people aren't, right. And so that's a way that you can circumvent that if you're not able to keep physically going is develop your own cadence outside of that community container or context.

Curtis Worcester (24:18):

I still, I like that. Yeah, that's great. That's great advice there. I want to go back to something you kind of addressed there with the example, with a conversation between you and your mother just in general talking about taking small risks to kind of open up these deeper conversations. You gave that example of you start with something slightly personal or asking a more thoughtful questions, hypothetical, however you want to do it. I guess my question, Brandon, is just are there any other ways or more examples of how listeners might be able to start applying these techniques in their own relationships?

Brandon Lee (24:50):

Yeah, so just to give another example. So when I was in real estate, the average person there mostly cared about, just to give people a picture. It was almost like imagine if a frat bro had too much money and that was the default, that would be the stereotype of the average person that I met during that time.

Curtis Worcester (25:11):

Got it.

Brandon Lee (25:12):

And people in that space, they're not necessarily going to care so much about art and personal growth and spirituality and self-reflection. They're just concerned about partying, drinking girls and cars. Those are the main topics and maybe working it out. And so you would imagine that the other topics that I just mentioned, they're not going to, they're either going to ridicule those kind of topics or they're going to be like, give you squinty eyes or just be entirely closed off. I would say more often than that, that's the optics of it. And so if for whatever reason I was really into spirituality and I wanted to engage in conversation with someone from that world, I'd get something adjacent and I might start with something like, you know what? Hey, I just read this really interesting book lately. And that would be a very vague invitational fishing hook of, I wonder how they respond to this question.

Curtis Worcester (26:07):

And

Brandon Lee (26:07):

If they're like, oh, cool, what'd you learn? And then that gives me a window of, okay, there's some curiosity here. And maybe I respond with, oh yeah, I was just learning about a different way to think about what motivates myself. And so that's another way to keep it vague. And if they keep biting, basically I'm giving them progressively more interesting fishing hooks and maybe throwing the fishing reel even deeper or further each time and seeing if they go with me each time. And yeah, basically I keep going until I feel like I hit their point of resistance of either the curiosity dies or they all of a sudden put their guard up and they're like, oh, that's weird, or that's dumb. But so long as they're curious is that I take that as open invitation to keep sharing, get a little bit more vulnerable or core to how I actually feel that thing or core to the actual point that I want to share. So that'd be another example.

Ben Smith (27:01):

Yeah. Brandon, I have a off script question that I'm just thinking about as we cut off. This is, I think about my grandfather passed away I think four or five years ago. He was 99 when he passed World War II generation, but he lost the majority of his hearing throughout retirement. So he had a real tough time actually, the bigger the room got with the amount of people, the more he became isolated because it just became too much noise. He couldn't hear well

Brandon Lee (27:33):

On

Ben Smith (27:33):

A one-on-one basis. He was good, but when it was multiple conversations happening, he would withdraw. So I guess my question is, look, a lot of us have physical limitations is especially as we age, we're going to develop health issues, physical limitations, things like that. And again, technology might not be our thing, especially with some people. So I know you mentioned here's online communities and creating that, but just in the scope of if you were in that situation, you have physical limitations, whether it be site hearing something or physical, I can't move around. Well, how would you kind of work on investing in community and relationships there? How would you go about that? And again, maybe implying the conversation about what you just said about using conversation to build into relationships.

Brandon Lee (28:24):

That's a great question. I think one thing that came to mind was not all relationship building has to be founded on verbal activity. I think this is a common thing. This is a common tactic that we use. When I was running the education company, I was working with teens and I used to be a very disgruntled, moody, teen, teenage boy, and we met a lot of moms that just had no clue how to build trust with them, like relationship with them girls, we've noticed just tend to be very much more with getting to know each other just by straight conversation. And we noticed that guys, and including myself with my own hindsight, I much more prefer doing activities as a way to build trust. And so that might be one avenue of, if in your grandpa's case, if he's hard of hearing, it's just like there's a lot of communication that can happen and just playing a physical game or just doing an activity with them, like cooking with someone, it's very collaborative. You're working with them. It's very intuitive. There's physical proximity, there's a lot of unspoken, more body language that can be shared or even playing a silly game, I dunno, heads up of nut or playing rock paper, scissors or silly games like Ultimate Ninja. I don't know if people have played that or even crafting activities like painting together or sketching or using a coloring book together. If you have limited, I guess fine dexterity capacities, you can figure out other ways just playing catch like classic American activity,

(30:03):

Playing catch instead of out on a field, literally tossing a bouncy ball around and seeing how many, if you can land it in the cup, making it a game out of it. So those are absolute ways to build trust that are very accessible to literally every kind of age. And so that would be a fantastic point of connection if someone's more limited.

Curtis Worcester (30:25):

I love that. I love that. Those are great examples. Brandon, I want to ask a question. I'm continuing on my theme here of opening people up for deeper conversations and being vulnerable. This time I want to ask you as the person receiving the deep conversation, so you're the listener in this scenario. So again, as a listener, you highlight the importance of suspending judgment and leaning into curiosity. What are some ways that people can practice this skill and to help create that safe space for others to share more deep conversations with us?

Brandon Lee (31:01):

Yeah, so I think ultimately if you are the kind of person that reacts strongly to information, you have strong judgments about how people ought to be, their beliefs, their actions, their lifestyle. It really starts with you. You're allowed to keep those beliefs. You're allowed to have those reactions. The question is, are you happy with the relationships in your life that it's creating? And if you're okay with that, then cool, keep your cards. If that's working for you, that's working for you. But if you're unhappy, then it's just prime time for reflection in terms of, okay, why am I so bothered and react so strongly when I meet people who say these kinds of things, think these kinds of ways have these kinds of actions. And it's taking time to unpack that because unless you examine what's underneath those judgments and why you feel so strongly about it, you're going to keep having those reactions.

(31:57):

And until you unpack and understand, well, why is it that I'm so bothered by someone who says these things? Well, oh, okay, it's because it makes me believe that they have, they just have a fundamental level of disrespect and disregard for other people. Well, is that true? Is that actually true? If someone cusses, does that mean that they're just a foul mouth, low character, low integrity person? I mean, maybe sometimes. So you have to examine those assumptions and be willing to investigate like, Hey, could it be possible that someone cusses a lot but has very high integrity and lives a life of high moral character? Is that possible? Is find, could there be one person on the planet that actually exists like that? And if yeah, you're allowed to believe that, nope, that's impossible, then okay, back to square one, you're allowed to maintain that belief.

(32:53):

And if you're okay with those relationships, cool. But if you're willing to question those things and examine that route, you might find yourself being more open. Okay, yeah, maybe there are people who cuss like a sailor, but actually are really great people and I just haven't met. But because I shut myself off, I actually don't give them the chance to prove that assumption of mine wrong. And so repeating that kind of motion in any aspect of your life in which you have that kind of strong reaction that could yield a lot of results in beating and having more conversations with people that poke those kinds of buttons for you. And yeah, you'll have to be ultimately the judge of whether that's a productive use of your time and yields more relationships that you like. But yeah, that would be a concrete way is just examine yourself and what's actually provoking you and why.

Ben Smith (33:42):

Love that. Yeah, nice. I like that answer. So Brandon, you've described yourself as being a little nomadic here as somebody that goes place to place. And obviously I know from just the aging population that Curtis and I work with, and again, what we've had on the conversation on this show was that a lot of times the retirees especially experienced loneliness after major life changes, loss of a spouse, a move health challenge, and a lot of that I think is just mourning. I'm mourning what it was, and I don't have that anymore. I'd love to hear you in terms of, oh, I was in San Francisco and now I'm not. And now I was like, oh man, did I really make a mistake here? Did I really just blow it because I went from someplace I was thriving and doing really well, and I had great connections to now I have none of that. I don't have the same connections here, different culture, different rhythms of things. How have you kind of transitioned and kind of gone, hey, not more in the past, but looking forward to the future to be optimistic and hopeful about it. How have you kind of battled that? Because again, I can see where that can be a cause of loneliness and people Sure.

Brandon Lee (34:59):

Yeah. I think at a high level, the more clear the path forward is to you, the easier it is to focus on moving forward. And I think, so if people are getting caught in the past, part of it is because maybe the future isn't very clear or very reachable. So I basically wouldn't blame anyone for feeling really shitty if their current situation feels very bleak. So I think that's just a very normal part of the human experiences. It's like if you feel clueless and lost about how to move forward and you just left a really good situation, yeah, there's a lot to mourn and that's got to suck. And I think that's very human reaction. So I think that's part of the intent of this conversation where it's like, okay, how can we help people construct a path forward? And so at least in my situation, the times that I've had to reset multiple times, I've been fortunate in that I've done it before. So basically, if I were to ever restart again from a community standpoint, if we eliminated all my close friends right now, yeah, I'd be very sad because those were many years in the making.

(36:02):

I would be lying if that in staying didn't hurt, and I would probably need to take a break to digest the grief from that and the loss of that and the vacuum of those relationships. And I would be pretty okay in the sense of, all right, if I want to make it my priority right now to rebuild that, I will do that. If it's not my priority, then I got to be okay with consequence of it's going to be a lonely bit lonely stretch for a bit until I'm willing to devote my time to it. But yeah, the bottom line is that so long as you are willing to put in the time that the reps to meet the people or find these fishing holes, to meet these people and then show up consistently to build those relationships, you will eventually get there. It's purely a numbers game, and if you're willing to do that, you are going to be on your way.

(36:47):

It's simply a question of when, not if, but you got to be willing to do that. I don't think there's, as much as we all would like to wave a magic wand and have perfect community tomorrow, that's just not how life works. Unfortunately, maybe some small lucky people who win relational lotteries all of a sudden going to stumble into magical communities. But I don't assume that I will ever be one of those, and I wish I could, but for now, I got to rely on just focusing on a process where I got to still meet through a bunch of people to filter and sift down to the people that are really build trust with them. And that takes time.

Curtis Worcester (37:30):

Yeah. This is great. Brandon, I want to keep going here on this kind of the effort it takes to build this community around you, and you just spoke to it, the persistence, the time, the effort is very important. I guess my question is, it's easy or it may seem easy for us to sit here and tell people that, right? Stay with it. You can do it. What are some ways that you know and that you can share with people to really keep them motivated and patient during this process of really trying to find that community after meeting maybe hundreds of people and they still don't love the community around them, how can they stick with it? How can they stay motivated to really find that group?

Brandon Lee (38:08):

For me, it was rooted in two things. One, it was actually tracking. So I actually had a spreadsheet during this time where I would, every single time I had a coffee chat with someone that I didn't know I met for the first time, I would just write notes down about how that conversation went, what I liked about that connection, what it did. And I think filling that up and seeing my spreadsheet populate, felt encouraging. I'm like, cool. I actually have met a decent amount of people by the time I filled out 50 people. I'm like, wow, I met a lot of people. So that's one. And then two is how confident you feel about the fishing holes that you have to meet more people. If that doesn't feel solid, then you're not going to have that sense of optimism because you're just kind of projecting forward and the open question of how am I going to meet more people that are closer to the kinds of people that I want to meet?

(39:04):

If that is a question mark, that's not encouraging at all. So for me, I spent a lot of time during that phase trying to answer the question of, cool, I'm going to try to find these kinds of events. I need to try to find these kinds of communities so that I feel like I have a more consistent stream of interesting people to meet. And so long as that was true of like, okay, there's this weekly meetup that I came across and there's usually 40 people that show up every time. Cool. I feel like I can hang out here for a good year, and if I literally meet everyone's, okay, I have a year planned out, basically a year of weeklys planned out here. So just local church, this is what local church used to serve as. It's a official to meet interesting people.

Curtis Worcester (39:50):

But

Brandon Lee (39:51):

If you're not into that, then it's like finding volunteer clubs, finding local nonprofits to get more involved in, get involved with your local library, like local government. Those are ways that are relatively accessible. Volunteer at soup kitchens or something. And then eventually you'll meet the other people who volunteer regularly, and then that's another way to do it. Or local sports, there's a lot of intramural things or knitting clubs or reading clubs. There's clubs for everything nowadays. So just show consistently and for the things that of course you're interested in, because it'd be like pulling teeth if you were trying to go to a thing that you didn't actually do. But yeah,

Ben Smith (40:33):

Love that. So Brandon, just kind of listening to our conversation today is obviously a key takeaway, which I'm hearing from a lot of things that you're saying is really is identifying the interests you have is going to be really vital in matching that to that community of people and finding that shared passion, that shared interest, because just for how many people that we see of, Hey, kiddos are telling me I got to go to the retirement community, which we all probably know that that's probably the best place to go to find other people, to get easily accessible people and then find common interests and then do that. But kind of the key protest is, well, I'm not old. They're old, is that I'm not someone that identifies with them. So what I like is the structure that you're building here is independent of having to go to a centralized place for just maybe just a supported living and helping me live independently, that there's other things at the top of that. What are just one key takeaway that I think you would like to share to our audience on overcoming loneliness and building deeper and more fulfilling relationships? What would you identify? Just that one thing.

Brandon Lee (41:51):

Just one thing.

Curtis Worcester (41:54):

You get one shot. Yeah.

Brandon Lee (41:57):

Oh man. Got to think about this. I would say for most people who are listening, you've already lived a lot of life, you've already met a lot of people. It is far easier to rekindle warm relationships than to start from scratch.

Curtis Worcester (42:13):

So

Brandon Lee (42:13):

In my mind is if you feel like you're isolated right now for your audience, I just pick up the phone and I would just start texting, calling, whatever, or emailing and just reaching out to old contacts, catching up with them. Usually by someone's fifties or sixties or retirement, you've met hundreds of people, arguably, you could literally go through, try to think of every person that you've ever had a meaningful conversation with, whether in life or work, have a catch up conversation with them. And that could be the foundations of a new friendship rekindling something. Or I think my favorite strategy is if you enjoyed a conversation with someone asking at the end of that conversation like, Hey, do you have anyone else in your life that would enjoy having this kind of conversation or are into the activities that I'm into that might be open to chatting? So basically turning every conversation into, for lack of a better word, a lead gen process

Curtis Worcester (43:16):

To

Brandon Lee (43:17):

Meet other people. And literally, I think people who are in retirement age, if they simply did that, that probably could yield just as much results as I've had. I developed my process in my twenties when I didn't know anyone or just hadn't met enough people in life. So yeah, I feel like that would be a relatively reliable strategy.

Curtis Worcester (43:39):

Yeah, I like that a lot, Brandon. It was something I hadn't really thought of honestly as we were going through that, but you made a good point. You were building it from scratch, but it doesn't mean that somebody else can build it now with all the same connection. So I like that. So if you're listening and you're lonely, pick up the phone. You heard 'em. That's the one thing to do. I like it. Brandon, I have one kind of final question for you. It's a little bit of a pivot from the theme we've been going through here together. We have to ask it though. So again, the name of our show, it's the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. So I have to ask you a retirement question. Obviously with your very diverse background here and kind of all the different areas you've specialized in at this point in your life, looking forward now, how are you going to find that personal retirement success? What does that look like? Yeah,

Brandon Lee (44:29):

In my mind, I feel like I already that, and that's partially because of my definition of retirement. I don't think retirement is about not working anymore. I think retirement is about having the freedom to decide how often and what you work on. I think a lot of people who think about retirement is just like, you know what? I just never have to go to work again. And they end up being bored within a month because they don't have anything meaningful to devote themselves to. So retirement in my mind is equally important about freedom from having to do things that you don't want to do, but also having freedom to do the things that you actually want. And because of the lifestyle that I've had so far and my career choices so far, largely, I'm currently already living a life where I'm mostly already on that track of I'm mostly spending my day doing things that I want to do and mostly not doing things I don't want to do.

(45:28):

And I think given that definition of retirement, I feel like I'm already there. I've already learned the core skills of how to have a successful retirement. Even if someone gave me a million dollars tomorrow, I don't think I'd be spending my time that much differently. I'd still want to be working on meaningful things, and the thing that I'm working on right now feels pretty meaningful. I've built up a pool of relationships that feel really supportive to me. I don't think I need that many more of those. I don't know if I have enough time for them anyway, if I had that. So yeah, I think I'm already there using a lot of the skills that tactics that we've talked about in this conversation.

Ben Smith (46:03):

Fantastic. Brandon, that was a great answer. I really appreciate that because again, I think there's freedom to do something and freedom to not do something. And I think you covered that, and that's really cool. Well, Brandon, I want to thank you for coming on our show today. Again, I know just loneliness is a theme that comes up a lot. Curtis and I are having conversations with folks and you develop money, but the money doesn't mean if you don't have the other parts of your life really built and developed. And I think that's something that comes up. So I think this is a really good foundational library episode that we can share with the folks we work with, but also the public that listens to our show and subscribe. So thank you for coming on. We really appreciate it. We will put your information on our website so people can find out more about you, follow you as well. And thank you again for your time today.

Brandon Lee (46:54):

Yeah, thanks for having me on. It's been my pleasure.

Ben Smith (46:57):

Alright, take care, Brandon.

Brandon Lee (46:58):

Cheers.

Ben Smith (46:59):

Brandon Lee, what was a really cool conversation again, awesome. Just a different guy than somebody that we're used to interviewing, right? Is

(47:07):

Here's somebody that's going around the world and experiencing lots of different ways of life and kind of interesting to hear kind of this as he goes, different cultures, different groups of people and interests, how he's plugging in and taking those lessons and then translating it to maybe our own lives and kind of what we see on a daily basis. So again, kind of good parallels and I think sometimes you can just reapply lessons that others are really tuned to and inherent to maybe ourselves. So again, I think Brandon did a great job kind of helping us out with that today and talking about that. So you can find more about our show by going to blog dot guidance point llc.com/ 1 0 8 because we're 108 episodes in now, and you can find more there. You can reach out to brandon@geniusofyou.com, so YO u.com there. And then we will have Brandon's LinkedIn profile.

(48:08):

So if you want to follow him, he does post a LinkedIn as well, and you can kind of follow him there and connect with him and see what he's up to. So we'd love to point you to those places. Again, go to our website, you can find a little bit more of the links and transcript and things like that. But we really appreciate you tuning into our show. I hope you got something out of today's conversation. I know we certainly did, and if you anything you want to reach out to us about or suggestions for a future episodes, we'd love to hear it. But until then, we'll catch you next time.

Outro (48:38):

Ladies and gentlemen, you've just listened to an information filled episode of the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. While this show is about finding more ways to improve your retirement happiness guidance point, advisor's mission is to help our clients create a fulfilling retirement. We do financial planning so that people can enjoy retirement and align their monetary resources to their goals. If you are wondering about your own personal success, we invite you to reach out to us to schedule a 45 minute listening session. Our advisors will have a conversation with you about your goals, your frustrations, and your problems. Make sure you check out guidance point advisors on our blog, Facebook and LinkedIn, and you can always check out more episodes of this podcast on iTunes and Spotify, and of course, keep on finding your retirement success.