When it comes to planning for retirement, the traditional focus is on finance and rest. It is practical and sensible, and necessary – especially in the current economic climate. Financial pressures mean that many feel unable to even contemplate stopping work, or stepping off the treadmill fully or in part, and being able to sustain a new way of living. Working lives are can be busy and stressful. People find themselves trapped in career cul-de-sacs and it feels like the only way out is to stop altogether. Who wouldn’t fantasise about stopping the bus?
All the thinking and preparation for a quality life experience in retirement, is often overlooked. I wonder how transformational it would be if equal emphasis was placed on the social and emotional aspects of this significant life stage. Because guess what, people find it really tricky, and confusing, and unsettling. So much so, there is a growing trend of people unretiring.
Unretirement happens when, after stopping work and catching some restful and reflective moments, retirees reconsider their life-goals and re-enter the working world in new and exciting ways. Reinvesting their experience and skills in new and different ways.
This can be driven by a renewed sense of personal purpose. A desire to enjoy more control, and to develop and take new choices, and to create a greater sense of purpose and pleasure. Perhaps achieving latent ambitions and long-held dreams, or seeking to make a difference to the world around us by learning new things, meeting new people, developing new businesses, undertaking charitable work, or enjoying people-focused activities.
It is a time when we want to divorce ourselves from financial shackles it feels like we are married to. To liberate ourselves by determining our own wage worth – whether that be higher or lower than what came before. Or so set us free from mortgage repayments, or any spending that doesn’t feel necessary anymore. To live for self, not finance.
Five helpful tips:
- Investing time and energy in planning for self at all stages of life and work, helps build self-awareness and agency. You will be better prepared for retirement and there will be fewer unwelcome surprises later.
- Reinvent your career choices pre-retirement, be bold to create and navigate careers junctions and roundabouts. Be the person you want to be at work today, not consigning it to ‘maybe one day’.
- Take time out to rest, reflect and re-energise when retirement comes to help reconcile what was imagined and how the reality looks and feels. What new insights and opportunities does this shine a light on?
- Remember it is never too late to learn new things. Forget that old adage about old dogs and new tricks.
- Retain a focus on your values, pleasures and choices, unretirement is when you are doing things for you, no-one else.
See also:
My friend has retired and I am in shock
Lockdown gives us retirement clues
Find Joy in the Middle 