Eat, pray, love. Everyone is trying to find themselves these days, and now that you are retired or retiring you have the opportunity to do more than just dream about it. If your identity has always been intertwined with your job, you may find creating a new identity quite challenging. Television shows about the “witness protection programs” come to my mind, and I wonder if this might not be a little like that. Liz N. Burby (Special To Newsday (Long Island, N.Y. January 13, 2007) wrote an article about how this particular transition is often more challenging than expected.
If the initial feeling of euphoria has dissipated, it is time to sit back and take stock. Unfortunately most of you didn’t have the time to “find yourselves” during your working years, because you were busy just living. What about now? Is it too late to have a revelation? Being out of work, after 40 or 50 years, is quite a shock. In a sense you lose your identity, your prestige and that sense of camaraderie associated with the workplace, all at the same time.
It is hard to plan for these feelings. Questions about what you did were often answered with a job description. It isn’t surprising that saying “I’m retired” leaves you feeling kind of flat. Work, whether you liked your job or not, gave you a certain satisfaction. Work made you feel important and at least made you feel that you were contributing to some greater good. When you leave that environment it is like starting all over again.
Experts say that you can replace your old job-linked identity with something equally satisfying, but that may be easier said than done. Of course they all recommend doing pre-retirement planning, but even if have already retired there are some steps you can take. Your job created structure, community and a sense of purpose that you will need to replace. Feeling old and useless is not an option. Most everyone thinks to plan financially for retirement but nobody mentions the emotional rollercoaster of going from 100% work to zero.
Experts also suggest that you approach this new phase as if it were a job search. Think about who you are, or who you want to be, and itemize your interests, your style and your needs. You don’t want to just fill your time with busywork. You want to look at retirement as an opportunity to do what you have always wanted to do. Tap into old interests or discover new ones. Build a resume to suit those interests and then make plans and education yourself accordingly. There are still things to do and places to go.
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