"New Way Forward" with Paul Long

Paul is an award-winning former news reporter, anchor, producer and content creator for major corporations. He is a third-generation storyteller, with both his father and grandfather involved in the media industry. Paul has been honored with numerous prestigious awards including the New York and Chicago Film festivals while also earning an Emmy for Best Documentary.

After an illustrious career in media, Paul was wanting to transform not retire. For this phase of his life, he wanted to find a new purpose and a much more fulfilling one. This was 16 years ago.

As I got older, I realized that there was something else for me. I wanted to take years of my experience that I had and translate into something even more relevant, meaningful and fulfilling for me and hopefully for others

Paul realized that many others are also struggling to find purpose in their later life. Paul then started "New Way Forward" as a platform aiming to equip more people with practical tools to help them transition into a newer phase.

Redefining Retirement

There is a growing lifespan across the world. The evolving health solutions have improved longevity to a great extent. Research shows that by 2030, countries such as Canada will witness a life expectancy of 84 years while the USA will have it at 81 years! Paul discovered that there were a number of people who were retiring, and after a year of "Retirement Honeymoon", they would start suffering from a "Retirement Nightmare", having lost purpose and relevance. They felt as if they were failing in life.

"If you are 65, look back thirty years, that's when you were 35. Look at how much life you had in that time. So what are you going to do with your next 30 years?

Many of us spend our life planning and striving to move up to the next level. One is used to the challenges of having a successful life. But after retirement, that purpose is lost. Various research has also shown a significant decline in happiness and purpose post-retirement. But the current trend may be drastically different for the new generation. Many of us may not have enough savings to retire completely. With increased longevity, the trend of retirement age is also increasing across the world. Longevity and the world economy have completely redrawn our life maps. "It is no longer the retire and die thing". If you are taking care of yourself and living fruitfully, there are good odds that you will easily live actively into your nineties.

Click to visit Paul Long's New Way Forward Website

Healthy Longevity Habits

One of the examples Paul gives is of incorporating a morning routine. He suggests avoiding watching a lot of TV at the night. Paul spends his morning time in meditation even if it means simple breathing. After meditation, Paul does Yoga and exercises. For him, exercise remains the key to a healthy lifespan.

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As he was improving his lifestyle, he also started taking baby steps toward a healthy diet. The incremental progress helped him to get more momentum. Paul quotes the popular book "Atomic Habits" to focus on the next 1% of improvements to achieve long-term habit changes. Atomic habits are derived from various psychological research and have been cited multiple times as a proven behavioral change technique and it revolves around focusing on the "why?". Paul also focused on alternative but proven techniques such as cold showers, regular resistance training, and other steps to help preserve his vitality.

Practical Steps

Paul initially came up with the name "ProBoomers" but he started to get engagement from people who were in their thirties and forties. Even the younger generation was asking questions about the different phases of life. When the pandemic struck, this became ubiquitous leading to great resignation and quiet quitting. All of these trends seemed to be culminating in a "Great Rethinking" where people are self-inspecting their identity. But the question is "How do we Rethink? and How do we self-examine?".

One of the critical aspects is to understand that our beliefs are at the core of many things that we are today!

Beliefs drive emotions, emotions drive decisions, decisions drive actions and actions drive you to where exactly you are

Most beliefs get embedded in childhood. They stay with us all our life and we may never truly recognize them. Some of them may inhibit us from achieving our full potential. To make important changes in our lives, we will have to rethink and redo our beliefs. We have to question some of the most fundamental ones that are now outdated.

Paul's contents about New Way Forward are freely available online in the form of video posts, podcasts, and articles. He also regularly posts on LinkedIn about his new materials. He is currently writing a book to reach a wider audience. He gives an example of his latest post about practicing gratitude which can be done at any moment. Many research has shown the benefits of gratitude. Sometimes it could be as trivial as being thankful for getting out of bed or it is being thankful for the love of family. But like any other habit, it needs to be developed by repeated actions and Paul likes to be the one to remind us!

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