Why high achievers can feel lost in retirement

Sometimes people who achieve a great deal in their working life struggle unexpectedly in retirement. How could this be?

Part of the answer may lie in RDS: Relevance Deprivation Syndrome. This describes the uncomfortable feeling that you no longer feel important or influential.

RDS can affect many people in retirement, but high achievers may experience a particular variation of it.

Why?

Because many senior professional roles involve delegating tasks to other people. That’s natural.

Then retirement arrives.

Suddenly there is no support structure. You may now find yourself booking your own tickets and solving your own IT problems, just to mention two simple examples. Of course, retirement usually provides more time to deal with these matters. But that’s not the point.

The deeper issue is emotional, not practical. What you can miss is the feeling of once being important.

If this description fits you then don’t despair. Here are two remedies.

1.   Throw yourself into activities that maintain your relevance: mentoring, volunteering, learning, to name a few;

OR

2.   Dial it down and relinquish importance in order to discover a quieter sense of identity, beyond status and achievement.

It requires a deal of reflection to come up with YOUR answer.

If these ideas resonate with you, you are very welcome to text me on 0409 116 766 for a brief obligation-free conversation. It may help you to think things through.

Dr Jon Glass
Retirement Specialist and Coach