Session 12 · Guide and forms

Session 12 Participant Guide

WHYZMEN · REWIRE RETIREMENT

A Tuesday in 2031

Session 12 · Building the Vision · Participant Guide

Rewire Retirement · Monday, March 1, 2027 · New Community Church

"See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?" — Isaiah 43:19

This morning

You are not starting a vision this morning. You are finishing one. Since October you have written your story, named your two values, read your strengths, heard your table name your gifts, noticed what you care about now that you did not care about at forty, written your Threshold, and put a mission in the top pocket of the pack. Everything on these pages is already inside you. The job now is to see it.

Move	Minutes	What happens
The harvest is in	12	Your mission at the Five Gates, your four verbs, one reaction from the T-shirt week. What you already hold.
The destination	8	Mission is present tense. Vision is future tense. The Flourishing Signs, read aloud.
A Tuesday in 2031	25	You write one page. An ordinary good day, five years from now.
Which part are you already living?	25	You read it to your triad. They ask one question.
The pack comes off	12	What you will gladly not carry up the second climb.
Two Tuesdays	8	Two men read theirs. A blessing. One door this week.

At the tables first: your four verbs, one reaction from the card, one line on whether My Next Chapter still matches your mission — and one moment with last week’s practice, “Honest, open questions.”

Before you write

Do not write in domains. Do not write in goals. Write a day.

Why a Tuesday? Because meaning lives in the particular.

It is an ordinary Tuesday, five years from now. Nothing special is happening. Write it in the present tense, as if you are living it. Let these people and things find their way in on their own: your wife · a friend who actually knows you · someone you are helping · your body · your faith · something you are learning · something you do for no reason but joy.

Start with the morning. End with what you are grateful for when the light goes off. One page. If you run out of page, you have written enough.

The page

Which part are you already living?

Read your Tuesday to your triad, all of it, without stopping. They will ask you one question and no other:

"Which part of this are you already living?"

Then each of them will tell you one thing he heard that is true of you now. Write your answer here, in one sentence. This is the most important line in the guide.

Grow · Connect · Adapt · Give — a promise from Session One

Session 1 promised these four verbs would come back when you wrote your vision. Grow: keep learning; treat the mind as trainable, not declining (Growth & Learning · Faith & Spiritual Life). Connect: build and keep the relationships the work tribe used to provide (Marriage & Family · Friendships & Community). Adapt: embrace the new season rather than clinging to the old role (Identity & Purpose · Health & Wellbeing). Give: convert capacity into significance (Service & Contribution).

Which of the four is this season mostly asking of you?

The Flourishing Signs

A vision is not a wish. It is a life you would recognize if you were living it. Read the signs below. Circle three you can already say yes to — that is the part of the destination you have reached. Then circle one you are reaching for — that is the part your Tuesday is pointing at.

	When it is working…
Faith & Spiritual Life	I can point to where I met Christ in my actual week, not where I intended to.
Marriage & Family	My wife sees more of me, not less.
Marriage & Family	I ask about her life instead of telling her mine.
Marriage & Family	My kids and grandkids get my full self, not my leftover attention.
Marriage & Family	My wife, kids and closest friends notice a difference in how I am present to them.
Friendships & Community	I have three men who actually know me — my story, my struggles, my hopes.
Friendships & Community	One of them would come if I called at two in the morning, and I would go for him.
Health & Wellbeing	I have more capacity than a year ago; my body is an instrument I care for, not a problem I manage.
Identity & Purpose	I can finish "I am ______" without a title, a rank, or a number.
Identity & Purpose	I can say no without feeling I am disappearing.
Service & Contribution	The people I help are becoming more capable, not more dependent.
Service & Contribution	I serve because I am called, not because I should.
Growth & Learning	I am excited about something I am learning, and it is making me better at loving people.
Recreation, Adventure & Joy	I play with no outcome attached, and I am actually there when I do.
Finances & Stewardship	Our money serves what matters most to us, and my wife and I can both explain the plan.
Practical Readiness	My will, directives and passwords are in order; no one I love will be left guessing.

If you can say yes to three, you have found flourishing. Not perfect. Found.

The five letters — a quiet check

Martin Seligman spent a career asking what a flourishing life contains and found five things: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment. Read your Tuesday once more and mark the margin with the letters you find. Most men in this room will find M, A and R. The letter that goes missing is P. If there is no joy on your page, the page is a job description. Put the joy back in.

The pack comes off

Christian, in The Pilgrim's Progress, cannot shrug his burden off by trying. It falls off at the cross — and he gives three leaps for joy. "Let us throw off everything that hinders… and let us run." (Hebrews 12:1)

This is not a loss. Look at your Tuesday and notice what used to fill a day like this and is simply not on the page. Did you miss it?

Four lines to close

Every man's page ends the same way. Four sentences, in this order. You heard two men do it this morning.

What I am already living:

What I am still reaching for (the one sign you circled):

What I have gladly set down (what nobody called about today, and you did not miss):

One step this week (one small thing you will do before next Monday toward this page):

One conversation or one door this week

Take your mission out the door once before we meet again: one conversation with someone your mission names, or one door where your verbs might serve. Say it to your triad. Date it. At Session 13 you tell us, in one sentence, what it said.

Homework — and what this page becomes

Everything before Session 13 (Monday, March 8), with honest minutes: about 120 minutes this week.

1. Finish your Tuesday page and its four closing lines, with the exemplar beside you (40 min). As you finish, underline anything on your page that happens every day or every week. That is your Rule, hiding in your vision. At Session 13 we weigh the page and decide what rides heavy and what rides light, and your Rule of Life starts from the underlines.

2. One conversation or one door about your mission (about 1 hr). The one you named to your triad and dated: a coffee with someone your mission names, or a visit where your verbs might serve. A closed door counts too. At Session 13 you report it in one sentence, and it becomes plank 3 of the Bridge worksheet we fill in together in the room.

This page is your Harvest Charter §2.2, A Tuesday in 2031. It is the required vision for every man. The eight domain paragraphs in Appendix C are there for any man who wants to go deeper, one domain at a time, over the spring — they are optional, and many men find them easy once the Tuesday is written, because they are describing a day they have already seen.

3. Our Tuesday, with your wife (20 min): read her your page, all of it, without defending it; ask for hers; write the three Our Tuesday lines in Charter §2.2 together. Not married? The person whose Tuesday is most bound up with yours. Two of those lines feed later pages: the shared practice becomes a line in your Rule (§3.2).

4. The Practice of the Week, One level deeper (below). It happens inside your week; no extra time.

Bring to Session 13: your Tuesday page with its underlines and your Our Tuesday lines, your Opportunity Map and T-shirt card from Session 11, and your October gauge scores (the Readiness Assessment you read at Session 2).

Optional · Going Deeper, not counted: the eight domain paragraphs, Appendix C, over the spring, and the books and shorter readings below.

This week’s reading — before Session 13

Required: in your guide and your Charter. Read them as you finish your page; they are inside the 40 minutes. Going Deeper only if it calls to you.

Required

• A Tuesday in 2031: the exemplar — one man’s page, marked, in your guide.

• The Flourishing Signs — your guide.

• The Ten Domains card — Harvest Charter.

Books · any time, only if one calls to you

• A Long Bright Future — Laura Carstensen.

• From Strength to Strength, ch. 5–6 — Arthur Brooks.

• Joyspan — Dr. Kerry Burnight.

• How to Live Forever — Marc Freedman.

Shorter readings · WhyzMen, in your Session 12 folder

• Why a Tuesday, Not a Target — how a vision for a life differs from a vision for a company, and why your page is a day, not a goal. About 12 minutes.

• Bloom’s Taxonomy Explained — why your Charter is a Level 6 document: the morning it turns from naming to authoring. About 9 minutes.

• Fink’s Six Dimensions Explained — you met it at Session 8. Read it beside Bloom: Bloom asks whether you can do the work; Fink asks whether the work has changed you. Your Tuesday page needs both. About 10 minutes.

Practice of the Week · One level deeper

How: Share one true thing you would usually keep back.

From the Toolkit: 3 · Speak Truly & Encourage

Rooted in: Arthur Aron.

Tried it this week ☐ · Bring one moment to the room.

“Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today.’” — Hebrews 3:13

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." — Jeremiah 29:11

The exemplar — one man's Tuesday, marked

You heard this page read clean this morning. Here it is again with the scaffolding showing. The tags in the margin are the tools from the binder, arriving on an ordinary day without being asked. Lines tagged Rule happen every day or every week: they are the ones you underline. Nothing on this page was planned as an exercise. That is the point.

Health & Wellbeing · Sign · Rule	I wake at 5:45 without an alarm. The air is cool. My sleep and wake rhythms are healthy and firm because I have worked to make them so.
Faith & Spiritual Life · S9 · Rule	I go quietly downstairs, make coffee, and read my daily guided devotional. The coffee smells wonderful and warms and wakes me. I pray and sit in silence, grateful for this day, and listen for what is calling me. I catch up on some chess moves and look at any to-do's.
S10 · shoulder to shoulder · Rule	Sandra wakes and we soon take our morning walk. Side by side, facing forward, breathing deeply is when we have our best talks and planning.
Marriage & Family · Sign	We talk about the grandkids. Jaspar, who five years ago was going on his first walk and dinner with a girl he had liked for two years, is now engaged to her. Judah just set a personal record in swimming and won a scholarship. Soraya, who once introduced her teacher to her imaginary friend Lucy, is writing a story about her. We plan Friday's dinner with two of our favorite couples and talk about the play we are all going to see.
S10 · the second question · the Listener card	At ten I meet Paul for coffee to check on each other's lives and the missions we are each working at. I realize I have asked him four questions before I have shared a thing — and he is realizing, out loud, that he has been dumping his day on his wife without asking about hers.
Marriage & Family · Sign	I have lunch with my son, Adam. He is enthusiastically busy on four fronts: this week's sermon, the second church expansion, Selah's applications, and two struggling families in the congregation. I am thirsty to hear all of it.
Service & Contribution · S11 · the Knapsack	That afternoon I meet with Gregory, whom I am mentoring through Urban Impact. He has become a ministry fellow there, and he wonders whether he could contribute more by following his passion for art, sportswear design or music. I ask him: if God put you in the wilderness with room in your pack for only one of those things, which would you choose? He lights up. He says he has been hearing, "Honor me with the highest use of the creativity I have given you."
Health & Wellbeing · the first mile	Then yoga, where a quart of sweat rolls off me and I drink a quart back in. In the lobby I set a lunch date with Roger, ten years younger, who wants to talk about retirement.
Marriage & Family · Sign	Sandra and I have dinner together, even though our tastes are completely different and I have kept off the weight I needed to lose with the same boring discipline that fixed my sleep five years ago. She tells me about the friend she had lunch with and the plans for Joyce's birthday.
Recreation, Adventure & Joy · P	It is winter, and I bring in a bundle of wood and build a fire in the stove. I read a chapter of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, then we catch a British murder mystery, hitting pause to argue about the plot.
S10 · Three Good Things · Rule	My call to sleep comes around ten. I write down three good things from the day and how they came about.
Already living · Identity & Purpose · Sign	What I am already living is the listening — I am here for people I know and love, I have nothing to prove, and I know them better and am better known.
Reaching for · Friendships & Community · Sign	What I am still reaching for is the two-in-the-morning friend. I have thirty years of monthly Zoom calls with the same men, and I am only now learning to ask them the second question.
Set down · S13	What I have set down is the advice-giver — the consultant, the agent, the parent with the answer. What I can still offer anyone is a way of listening and connecting, curating an idea, adapting it and delivering it — not by force but by presence. That has always been my mission.
One step	One step this week: I take an “I am struggling with…” question to another man in the program.
	A kiss to Sandra and lights out. I drift off, excited about tomorrow.

Take this guide home. Your page is the first draft of Charter Part Two, and it is the page your wife should read.