In many ways, work is never far from Dan Steen’s mind. Whether he’s laboring on a home improvement projects with his wife or traveling to visit one of his kids, many of the ways Steen chooses to live his life outside his career are influenced by his experiences as executive director of Calvin Community.

Steen said the life lessons he has learned from the residents of the continuing-care retirement community have changed him in innumerable ways.

“These residents living here, they’re my mentors,” he said. “I learn so much from them, not only about daily life, but Christian life, too. Their convictions are so strong, and there’s so much to learn from them.”

Steen said he has gained a new perspective on life from spending so much time around his elders, people whom he views on the same level as his elderly parents and others who played important roles in his childhood by giving him his first jobs and opportunities.

“Working here has made a big change in my life, and it’s definitely made my family life better too,” Steen said. “It makes me realize what’s important in life.”

Steen listens to the residents and then draws his own conclusions about how he can apply their advice in his own life.

“One of the things that many of the residents will tell you here is, ‘Don’t wait until retirement to take that big trip or to enjoy things. You need to do it now.’ So many of them waited until their husband retired to travel or take vacations, and they find out they have health-care needs or one passes away and the trips never happen,” he said.

Steen said he doesn’t have any strong ambitions to “take that big trip” right now. He saw much of the world while he was in the military, he said. Instead, he takes this particular piece of advice to mean that he should do what he can do while he can do it, and to him, this means maximizing the time he spends with his family.

“I’m happy doing anything with my family,” he said. “My wife and I spend a lot of time together – riding bikes, grocery shopping, remodeling the basement or mowing the grass together—it’s not hard to trip my trigger. Family to me is so important, and we make sure to visit my son and daughter and my parents as often as possible.”

But free time is not always easy to come by, he said. His job requires more than the typical 40-hour workweek, but the work is rewarding, which makes a big difference in his desire to carry out all his responsibilities, he said.

“If this job wasn’t fun, I would find it harder to be here,” Steen said. “One of the things that we say to new employees is that we want them to look forward to coming to work. We want them to have fun with their peers and with the people they’re taking care of, and we can tell that they are by all the residents who come here and tell us that they really enjoy living here and they enjoy our staff.”

Steen hasn’t always worked in health care, nor has he always spent his time around people. Among other things, he put served four years in the U.S. Navy and spent four years working at the U.S. Postal Service bulk-mail distribution center. Computerized typesetting was his specialty when his wife, then a nurse in a care facility, convinced him that he would be well-suited to work with people in the health-care field. He went back to school and completed his health-care administration degree in 1991, and has never regretted his career change, he said.

“There was a time in my life when I was working so much that I can barely remember what my kids were like when they were little,” Steen said. “And, working with computers, I realized that I wasn’t accomplishing anything by being on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week because computers can’t care about you. But my work here is life-gratifying. I feel like this is what’s been in mind for me all my life; it’s just taken me a while to get here.”