Many people don’t think
beyond financial security when they plan for retirement. However, if you don’t want to wake up the
“morning after” your retirement party staring into an empty void, you need to
plan for this stage of your life as carefully as you did when starting out on
earlier ventures.
An active mind and an active
body are every bit as important as an active bank account, if you are going to
embrace retirement living head on. Both
physical and mental fitness are important if you want a successful retirement,
so it stands to reason that you had better develop a passion or at least a
commitment to taking care of yourself.
It is time to find something that will engages
your all. Your younger days were filled with
passion and purpose that revolved around school, marriage, family, job and
financial security. Now is your time,
but the planning isn’t over. If you give
it some thought you can make these the best years of your life.
Your second commitment
probably centers on a desire to give something back to community. Lofty ambition, but we all would like to
think that we can do something to make the world a better place. Having a passion for some kind of volunteer
work is good, but think beyond just spending a couple of hours a week here and
there. Find something that you can really get involved with. Last week we talked about leisure and while
leisure focuses around having fun, being passionate about something gives you a
sense of purpose. The actually process
of working toward something is what challenges you and gives you a reason for
being here at all.
If you want to be sure that
you don’t drift into a purposeless passage of time, you need to make
plans. Take a look at the rest of your
life and figure out how you want to spend it.
A long retirement of just filling your time can lead to depression and
missed opportunities. Lacking passion
and purpose are what make you feel old.
It is not too late to accomplish things or have goals. The point is that you should never stop
evolving; you should never stop striving to be a newer and better version of
yourself. For the first time in your
life you have the time to reach beyond yourself.
Recommended Reading
I came across your blog today and enjoyed it. It looks like a great resource for retirement and empty nesters. It was the mention about the stages of life that triggered my Google alert service to send me here.
Question...
1) How would we get our site into your list for review?
2) We're also looking for people and writers to share their wisdom, thoughts, and experiences from their stage of life. I think our readers would benefit from your perspective. Do you guest blog for other sites? We'd like to promote your blog in the process.
Please reach out to me via our site if you're interested in contributing to our project.
Take care,
Eric
CEO/Founder
StageofLife.com
Posted by: Eric | August 19, 2009 at 08:38 PM