The Eighth Commandment Of Family Business Succession: Make The Rest Of Your Life The Best Of LifeUnt

Retirement should not be a death sentence. Rather, it should be the opportunity to re-invent yourself, do the things you have never done before but always secretly wished for, learn new things, travel, join new classes and the list goes on.

The first pre-requisite is to have a positive outlook on your new phase in life. This usually requires having a positive outlook on everything in your life.

Let me share with you two very different people I know and their responses to retirement.

Both retirees had very successful careers — money was not even an issue — and both had a loving family.

Yet one was forever miserable and burdensome while the other was full of life and looking at the opportunities ahead.

That's because one made the effort to enjoy every moment and continuously feel blessed while the other was always complaining or criticizing.

What are some of the factors that created these two different scenarios?

The one who we shall call Mark was very money-driven and materialistic-minded.

For Mark, the mark of success (pun intended) was how much money or “stuff” he had or was worth. It created a scarcity mentality, meaning if someone else had something, it meant that he had less. He, therefore, couldn’t share his wealth or his love.

His outlook in life was based on himself first and everyone else last.

By the time retirement came around, he was so attached to his business he couldn’t step away and had to be eventually forced out by his own kids. Mark also never cherished his family, so by the time he did have time on his hands, nobody was very interested in building a relationship with him.

He died with millions of unspent dollars in his account and in an estate that was eventually inherited by those he could have built a loving relationship with had he been less tight-fisted and more generous.

Contrast that with Barbara, who, while she was a very successful entrepreneur and worked hard to build a business, she never lost sight of her "raison d'etre" and showing how much she cared about the fa