Retirement Coaching 4

Have you put any more thought into your retirement as a result of the last blog? Hopefully you have, and hopefully your thoughts are positive ones. At least thinking about it is a step in the right direction. Nowadays, people are living on average, another 30 years after they retire. What a long time to create another phase of your life, or on the other hand an awful long time to just sit and waste, and what a waste that would be!

The ‘Old’ model of retirement, was where you finished your working life and that was it! You had lived your life and now you just kept the engine ticking over as long as you could. No more testing the engine to see how fast it could go, or how efficient it could be, or what its’ limits were or new found strengths. You just settled into a different kind of routine. Thankfully, “The ‘new retirement’ is not an ending, it’s a new beginning, the start of a life journey of vastly expanded proportion” (Richard P. Johnson, PhD).

A retirement research programme was carried out in Australia, the Retire 200 (100 men and 100 women) programme, to identify what it was that caused some retirees to be happy and others less so. Eight areas were found to be extremely significant, and one of them was receiving pre-retirement advice or education. This enabled people to be better prepared for the change, they showed lower levels of depression and a much more positive attitude to their life. The transition from a full-time working life was less stressful as there was a certain security in knowing that a lot of forward thinking had gone into the change. There was less apprehension around losing the familiar, and although change is not always easy, the pre-retirement planning smoothed the way.

Coaching for retirement, enables you to be pro-active and more involved in the whole process of retirement. It gives you the ability to look ahead and consider retirement as just another phase in your life. You are better able to determine what it is you want from life once you retire, and what you definitely don’t want to take forward with you! It enables you to critically look at your life to date, to evaluate the different parts and to decide what is truly important to you. By doing this, you may also come across old goals and dreams that never came to be due to life commitments, and now as retirement is approaching could become a major part of life ahead.

How you use your time in retirement is of the utmost importance. You still need a sense of fulfilment in your days, to feel good about yourself and to feel that you still have a contribution to make to family and/or the community. The Retire 200 programme identified that those retirees who were the happiest and most content, took part in at least five hours of purposeful activities per week. You may ask what is purposeful? Purposeful is whatever is of importance or significance to you, and by pre-planning you can identify these activities. It may be in the home or outside the home, paid work or volunteering in the community, a hobby or furthering your education. It may be something completely new or the continuation of a life long passion, it may be travel and adventure or the start-up of a business project. It is unimportant what the activity is, the only criteria is that it is something that motivates you to engage in it willingly, and that gives you a sense of fulfilment and belonging.

You are moving away from the role you have held most of your adult life, from a place of certainty and routine, this can cause a sense of grieving in some. It is a very daunting time, a time when you need to search for new ways to live your life, “He who cannot find footing, cannot move forward” H.E. Fosdick. Change can be intimidating to some people while others will love the challenge. Whatever your feelings toward the change, you need to have a plan for when you finally leave your job. “Don’t simply retire from something, have something to retire to” H. E. Fosdick.

There are so many things you can do. Just because you are ‘retired’ does not mean that you are finished. Everybody has so many talents and skills, and these don’t suddenly disappear the day they leave work. They may be skills that you thoroughly enjoy using, so why not continue using them in another way in this third phase of your life?
If you have always worked for someone else, maybe now is the time to do something for yourself, or continue in the company you are in, maybe one or two days a week in a consultancy/mentoring role. Even if paid work is not what you are after, how many younger people would love to benefit from some of the skills and expertise you have acquired over the years…..Retirement does not mean ending, it is simply reorganising your life!

If you are interested in Coaching for Retirement please contact me, I will be delighted to hear from you...phone, skype or email.