Yasmin: 0:04

Welcome to the Real Retirement Show. My name is Yasmin and in this special bonus episode I'll share with you the concept of practicing retirement and how you can start discovering your joy and play the foundation for an intentional retirement journey, even if you're many years away. I'll also share my family's story of coming to America and what led to this podcast. My family originally came to America from Vietnam. We were one of the boat people and we had to escape the country and during the journey we were separated from my dad. We were rescued at sea while our boat sank, and I'll share more of the story in a later episode. Coming to America, it was really about adjusting to a big change and most of my life I was an achiever. I remember going to school, making good grades, doing everything I was supposed to, climbing the corporate ladder and realizing that at the top of the ladder I was in the wrong place and that set me down a two decade journey to explore entrepreneurship, which I thought was going to be smooth sailing until I really dove into it, and it really hit me when I reached burnout, and I was in that moment that I decided to finally take some time off for myself, and this was when I was living in Portland, Oregon. I had gone to the beach every week to create a little space for myself, and that was when I actually started to practice this idea of retirement. I called it my Retirement Day practice, and that was seven years ago. Here's a clip from one of my retirement days. Hi friends, welcome to the beautiful Oregon Coast. My name is Yasmin Nguyen and I'd like to invite you to join me on my retirement day.

Yasmin: 1:50

I've lived in Oregon for more than 13 years now, and it's only been the last couple years that I've come out to really enjoy this beautiful place. I've been an entrepreneur for 17 years now, and I found myself, a couple years ago, completely burnt out. I remember this specific day. It was in 2015. I was sitting at my desk, barely able to stay awake, because I've spent several nights being up just working, and working, and working, and the reason why I was working was because I was constantly saying yes to everything.

Yasmin: 2:21

I had a serious case of what I'd call FOMO fear of missing out and, as a result, I was just overwhelmed with so much to do and very little time for myself. I found that I was getting sick. I was tired all the time I was in a bad mood, and one afternoon, as I was sitting at my desk, I got just so fed up and so exhausted that I was like I'm done, I cannot work another minute. And so that's when I went home, I've packed up my car, headed out to the coast and I drove, and I drove, and I drove, and finally, the minute that I got out here, I just felt this amazing calmness, this groundiness, this peace that I had not felt for a long time, and at that moment I made a commitment to myself to come out here more frequently. And then the following week I came out here again.

Yasmin: 3:12

Over the period of a year and a half, I've made it a practice to come out to the coast over 52 times. Each time as I went out here, I noticed that I got a sense of clarity, I got a sense of space so that I could really discover what was important to me, what was important in my life and what was important in my business. And also, at the same time, I got a chance to play. My way of playing is to take pictures and to be able to capture and witness that beauty in a special moment. That's a gift of being out here. And so each time that I sat out and enjoyed this day, I started to call it my retirement ding, because typically I would come out here on a Thursday or Wednesday and that was when people were at work and I got a chance to just play and feel what it's like if I was to retire. And that's when I came up with this concept of practicing retirement.

Yasmin: 4:07

When we think about retirement, it's something that we typically defer into the distant future, when we have enough money, when we have time, we're free responsibilities. But the problem with that is that we never know what's gonna happen in between now and in that particular future. And so when we think about that, what happens when we get to retirement? We might get sick, we might not have enough money, we might have other obligations, or we might get there and have no clue what we wanted to do. And so my idea and practice was to include a day of retirement every single week. Now, this particular day is something that I designated to come to the coast, but I invite you to consider what would you do on a day of retirement? And if you were to practice in this day of retirement each week for a single year, you would have had 52 days of retirement, and so I invite you to consider this concept of practicing retirement, and, even if you can't designate an entire day, perhaps you could designate maybe half a day of retirement and have 21 days of retirement in one year. Thank you for taking the time to be here with me, and I wish you all the best.

Yasmin: 5:26

As I was practicing retirement, I realized that, with all the success that I was trying to chase and all the things I was supposed to do, that I lost touch with joy, and so that sent me on a two-year road trip around the country to learn about joy and to talk to people and bring people together and discover what joy is.

Yasmin: 5:50

And, as a result, I got a chance to write this book called the Game of Joy, and upon publishing it, I realized that there's still something missing. I've got this roadmap for joy, but it was clear to me that there were people in our world are struggling to find and experience joy, and, specifically, I noticed that my parents they are seniors in their 80s, retired, and they've been struggling to connect with joy. They've been feeling isolated and lack of purpose, and that was what made me curious, and that was when I reached out to you and talked to you about your journey, your experience, kathleen, and that's when we decided to venture on this journey together to create the joyful retirement project and, in the process, research and learn. And then now, at a stage where we want to be able to share and invite others to be on this journey with us through this particular podcast.