A comment made by a good friend provided the idea for this post.
When speaking about retirement, she said, “for those of us who didn’t have ordinary careers — or ordinary lives — why would we expect to have ordinary retirements?”
Her comment sparked thoughts about choices in life and career that were less than ordinary.
Most people have lived lives of significance. Many have overcome adversity to lead successful lives. Many have discovered talents and skills to create opportunities and to bring dreams to reality.
Applying experience to make retirement extraordinary
Those hard-earned life lessons/experiences can be used to develop a vision of retirement that will be extraordinary.
Here’s a list to jump start your creativity:
- Try new things — new foods, new hobbies, new environments — and try something new every day.
- Keep learning — take courses, engage in self-directed study.
- Keep the mind active — those soduko and crossword puzzles count as do card games involving strategy such as bridge or poker.
- Travel as much as you can — it’s a big world out there.
- Read – read – read — in topic areas that you haven’t previously explored and in topic areas that you know you love.
- Keep moving — an active body supports an active brain.
- Explore new environments — have you been to that park just around the corner?
- Watch those great movies you missed while you were working.
- Celebrate something every week — Birthdays, anniversaries, public holidays, religious holidays — in our multi-cultural society, there is always a holiday.
- Please yourself first — you know what you want out of your day so go and get it!
- Take your time — savour every precious day of your retirement.
- Be grateful.
- Smile — for yourself and for the world.
- Stay current — keep up with local, national and world events.
- Don’t let technology pass you by — explore the social media; keep using your techie toys and keep updating your skills.
Each reader will have creative ideas about what makes life purposeful. Strategies for living successfully prior to retirement are adaptable to the postworksavvy lifestyle.
I invite each reader to develop a vision of retirement that evolves with age, that keeps the passion alive, and that makes retirement an extraordinary time of life.
The two previous commenters are right on. Two books that take up nonfinancial matters are “The Joy of Retirement,” by David Borchard; and “What Color is your Parachute? For Retirement,” by Richard Bolles and John Nelson. My husband and I used these recently to conduct a nonfinancial planning for retirement workshop.