I’m Retiring: What Will My Life Be Like?

If you are about to retire, you may feel nervous about the whole process. This article will give you some tips to help you feel more confident.

Retirement is a paradoxical time when a massive achievement comes with a big loss. That’s why many people feel confused when they’re about to retire. Retirement means that working life ends and a new phase of stability begins. This new phase may raise many questions for the future.

In the narrowest sense, retirement is defined as the end of active working life. It may be due to a person’s age or state of health that does not allow him or her to continue working. How much a person is affected by retirement depends on many factors. However, it is always a big change.

Work is one of the greatest pillars on which our lives are built. Basically, you organize all your daily routines around work. This aspect of life determines your schedule and how much time you have to spend on other things. It also guides your goals, influences your perception of yourself, and supports what you define as success or failure in life. That’s why you need to create a good retirement plan.

Retirement: a multi-step process

There are many stages in the retirement process. Each of them represents a step forward on the path to adapting to new living conditions. It is by no means an easy path. However, it will be much easier if you have enough knowledge to face future challenges.

Here are the steps to retirement:

• Pre-retirement time : this is the stage when a person realizes their working life is coming to an end. It starts when someone is retiring. A person also begins to think about their life after retirement.
• Feeling of novelty : when a person leaves his job, it is normal for him to feel the enthusiasm that he has more free time to enjoy.
• Disappointment : it usually appears a couple of months after retirement. A person’s mood may range from depression to overactivity and all of this may be confused with anxiety. This is because his new life does not seem to meet his expectations.

• Redirection : this is the stage when a person re-adjusts his old expectations to fit this new stage of life. He re-evaluates the situation and outlines goals and objectives in a more realistic way.
• Adaptation : here a person organizes new routines and plans new short- and long-term life projects. They are designed to adapt to the new conditions in which a person is currently living.

Not all retired people experience the same steps in the same order. Some people have already planned their lives very well after retirement and do not face many unexpected situations. They are ready the moment they are about to retire. Others, on the other hand, enter this stage of life in real confusion. Such people do not know what they should do or what to expect.

How to handle retirement the right way

Different schedules, routines, and environments will definitely change your life more or less. Retirement tends to require less activity. In addition, you may also go through a stage where you grieve about the places and co-workers you left behind and everything you didn’t achieve.

Despite all this, you should not forget the fact that retirement is also a great achievement in itself. If you manage it properly, it can open a beautiful, new phase in your life. At this point, it is possible to find new paths that will lead you to achieve other things. There are also some steps that can help you see the experience in a positive light.

Steps you can take to improve your retirement

• Prepare to retire conscientiously. You should start preparing when you are about to retire – during your last year of employment, if at all possible. That doesn’t mean you should think about the future. Instead, you should analyze your options. Make a list that includes all the things you like to do. This list should include all the things you stopped doing because you didn’t have enough time because of the work.
• Be active before retirement. You don’t have to wait for retirement to start the projects you want to do when you retire. Start them a year or two before saying goodbye to work.
• Strengthen your social relationships. The post-retirement phase is a good time for friendships. There are definitely many people who are in the same boat with you. So it’s a good idea to take care of the people around you.

• Change your focus. Don’t get stuck in the past. Look into the future. The past is past. It’s best to focus on the future and get excited about the opportunities it brings.

No major life change comes without a certain amount of mental pain. You need to be aware of that. You also need to know that retirement will bring some changes to your life that can renew your passion for your target if you have an open attitude to explore them.