Why “Meaning”?

In my conversations with accomplished leaders and professionals after they retired or sold their companies, I kept finding the same three overlapping areas of struggle:

1. Legacy — “What impact have I made that will live on after me?”

2. Connection — “Can I still cultivate vital friendships beyond my career?”

3. Meaning — “What really matters?” and “How do I make a difference now that I’m ‘out to pasture’?”

Of the three, meaning was by far the easiest for these men to talk about. Soon after retirement, high-achievers feel irrelevant and adrift — not looking to start a new enterprise, but also not ready to believe they’re washed up.

Spouses and partners raised harder topics: regret, loneliness, dissatisfaction, even depression. There’s clearly a deep well here. But the title of a podcast, like a book, is a front door — it needs to feel welcoming before it can feel deep. Meaning is the shallow end of the pool. It’s the way in, not the whole pool. That’s why I put it there.

“After Success” does similar work — it’s how my audience recognizes itself. The research keeps pointing to the same wound: a loss of identity that hits high achievers hard at retirement.

Why “Soul”?

The main title itself, Un-Retire Your Soul, drew its own pushback. One reader said it sounded like a “spiritual podcast.” Another said it implied a fault in the listener — when and why did you retire your soul?

Here’s my reasoning. “Un-Retire” locates the show in the world of retirement without saying the word outright. Most retirement podcasts live in the financial and health lanes. I’m not excluding those — but I’m after the territory of meaning, which includes fulfillment, connection, and yes, spirituality.

“Soul” is the word that opens all of those doors at once. It evokes life beyond this plane, sure — but it also evokes life beyond the mundane: creativity, purpose, values, matters of the heart.

This is exactly the terrain psychologist Erik Erikson mapped decades ago. He named this final stage of human development the challenge of “Integration vs. Despair” — a path into the depths of the psyche that requires facing unresolved pain, fears, and feelings. For Erikson, the loss of meaning and identity isn’t a problem to solve; it’s the spark that starts integration. And integration itself, he said, requires stillness, reflection, time in nature — exactly what most men trade away in retirement for a new kind of busy-ness.

My friend Robin put it more bluntly than Erikson ever did: “Work is my default distraction for avoiding my feelings.”

I’m not a therapist. But I believe a podcast built on honest conversation can be enough to spark the courage to look at what Robin’s naming.

One Last Thing

The sharpest comment I got last week wasn’t about the title — it was about the format: “Having spent 18 months sharing your own story, is this podcast an opportunity for you to hide in plain sight again? Are you turning the mic and spotlight onto someone else again?”

That question landed. I’m taking it as a warning not to shrink back. It’s why the title says Conversations with — not interviews of. If I let this become interviews of men rather than conversations with them, I’ll have used their stories to hide behind — exactly the risk that reader named.

If you choose to follow along, I invite you to keep me faithful to that. Call me out if the conversations start turning into interviews.

Shine,