Before they spent a year’s worth of retirement income on these projects, I thought we should have more dialogue. I asked, “Are you missing anything from your work life?” That’s when the door really opened and I realized what was going on.

“Well,” he stammered, “I guess the one thing I miss is having some goals and big projects to work on. None of the things I am doing at home are all that important, and I spent so much time focused on turning things around at the community center that I miss some of that.”

I asked if he had connected with anyone at work recently for lunch or coffee. “No,” he said. “I’ve just been sticking around the house.”

Talk about a tale of two different domino players in retirement. One was enjoying life after work with friends, healthy activities and community organizations. The other was still focused on work, and when those dominos were no longer in play, he felt left out of the game.

I think this is a powerful metaphor to use with clients. Imagine two people setting up a domino display. One sets up a single row of traditional black and white dominos while the other sets up several rows, with different colors, taking a few twists and turns. Which one looks more fun to build and watch fall? Which player is more likely to pick up those pieces and do it again? It’s likely the ones who see the fun in the process of building and rebuilding rather than just making one solid run at it.

That’s why I push financial services firms to get concrete training to help clients with the non-financial aspects of retirement—specific tools and resources that help clients develop ways to replace their work identity; fill their time; and stay relevant and connected, as well as mentally and physically active. These methods are supported by fields like positive psychology and behavioral economics.

We have to create better visuals, metaphors and analogies to help clients understand that retirement planning isn’t just about money. It’s about a client’s mindset and ability to plug in mentally, physically, socially and spiritually.

The domino effect starts on the first day of retirement. So advisors must be prepared to engage clients on topics outside of the dollars and cents. Here are some questions you can ask them:

  • What do you hope to achieve in the first week or two of retirement?
  • What are you going to do if retirement doesn’t turn out to be what you expected?
  •  What are a couple of things you’ll miss from work?

These questions help frame the transition and let clients know they should have goals they’re working on right away. The questions also let them know it’s OK to talk if their retirement isn’t going as planned. The last question lets the clients know it’s OK if they miss a few things about work and gets them started talking about replacing those activities with new meaningful ones.

This is a good time to introduce the concept of a “safety gap.” I recently watched a documentary called Lily Topples the World. The subject of the film was Lily Hevesh, a domino artist with more than two million YouTube subscribers. In discussing her craft, she offered tips to budding domino artists, one of which was to remove five dominos every so often to create a safety gap. That way, the entire project isn’t lost if something goes wrong during the building of the chain and the blocks start to fall by accident. Instead, just a small section falls, one that can easily be rebuilt.