Retirement: What to Expect

A plan to fill the hours of every day is a good start to happiness.

Have a plan! Don't just assume that life will dish up events to fill the long hours of a day with no focus. You have spent many years getting up and rushing into work at a job. Sometimes it has been a joy, but for most it had some component of negativity rather than joy.

 

It was not the fault of the job. Just our need for something different in life. So now we are retired. What is ahead?

 

The usual age of retirement is 65. Of course some retire earlier and some later. The fact is in a modern world that age is not old by most standards of living these days. There is so much more to do and accomplish.

 

Accomplishment is a strong motivator in human beings. We want to feel useful and not useless to the whole. We have been paid for so long for our talents and skills, it is hard to see it as accomplishment to offer our expertise as a volunteer. But it is one option.

 

Since retirement, I have never been busier. The secret is to start a new life. I have opened and operate a small church group that has a mandate for teaching and learning. In this, I have fulfilled my promise as a teacher of others.

 

Anyone can do it. Within us all is the need to fulfill some talents or skills we have yet to uncover in our working years. And the pressure is off.

 

We have no need for a salary and increases to keep us going. We now have pensions that sustain us in our experiences of other things.

 

We also don't have the pressures of a time clock. All things can be done in our time, not that of deadlines and others' wishes. Relax and take your time, it will all get done in time.

 

Don't look around and see how neat the house. Bake a cake and invite a friend over to share it. Making new and interesting friends is more important than your environment.

 

Any new endeavour you choose to encounter, will also introduce you to new people, places and things. Enjoy the journey. Open up to experiencing things from another perspective, without the constraints that your previous lifestyle offered.

 

Whatever we do in life needs to be done in joy and happiness. Change often brings fears. Preparation for the major changes in life, like retirement, can help us deal with those changes with peace and calm.

 

We do not have to experience deteriorating health. That tends to come with our fears. We do not need to give in an attitude of your too old or not well enough to do something. It merely requires your effort to find out what you want to do and how to accomplish it.

 

By the time you retire, you are old enough to stand up for yourself and realize you can make all these decisions for yourself. If you want to do something, go for it. It is your life and the older you get, the less likely you will stand up for self if you do not do it now.

 

No one else is living in this particular body. No one else has the same ideas and thoughts that go through this mind. Use them to your best advantage and go for it. Start something new or continue the path of the old and tried. It matters not, except as it empowers you as the individual you are expressing.