Emotions

People ask the question: what is retirement coaching?

Let me begin by mentioning two things that retirement coaching is NOT: it does not cover issues of financial planning nor mental health. There are many specialist practitioners in these two areas.

However, between those two practices, there is the emotional makeup of a retired/soon-to-retire individual. Why is this important? To answer this, I like to think of how emotions (happy, sad, angry, bored, frustrated, restless etc.) connect to two other aspects of who we are.

The first aspect is behaviour. How often have you seen a person lash out and behave badly because they are expressing an emotion such as anger or frustration? So it is not hard to believe that a retired person who hasn’t settled into a contented emotional pattern may start to impact those around in a negative way. This can’t be good in the longer term.

The second aspect is understanding. A retirement coach tries to help the retired person come to understand the world of postwork and the client’s place in it.  So, for example, what kind of balance should the client strike between activity and leisure. Yes, emotions enter into this equation. There is no universal answer to this; each person will find a balance, and in this it’s useful to get some help.

Yes a retirement coach will charge for the service but why not think of this as an investment (amortised over time) in your emotional future; no different from gym membership and probably a lot cheaper, as six sessions will suffice!

Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.

Risk

Conventional wisdom has it that risk aversion rises with age. This statement seems both empirically and theoretically reasonable, but let’s investigate further.

First I think of financial risk. There in retirement, where there is no prospect to gain income and top up a retirement account balance, it may be quite reasonable to become intolerant to investment risk.

Second, wounds and scratches take longer to heal in older age. How sad. However, that may sensibly discourage older people from skateboarding and rollerblading. Not only that; but as reflexes slow, along with our reaction time to the unexpected, there is again more reason for caution. Besides falling on your backside becomes less elegant the older we get. It’s that status thing.

The moral of this piece is that as we move into retirement we need to be aware of, and I say avoid, what I call acronymically SAHS or Stay at Home Syndrome.

In other words, even though there are reasons to become risk averse as we age, this is a trap to avoid. I say that we need to keep experimenting in retirement in order to secure our personal meaning. To experiment requires that we take risks, measured perhaps, but still risks.

Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.

Time and Energy in retirement

I want to talk about energy and retirement, but first to recap on time and retirement.

I have written before about time in retirement, which I think is a critical matter. I talked about the psychology of time and that it is experienced rather than directly measured by each of us, hence we can talk about time going quickly or slowly for us.

I want to take another perspective, that of energy, without getting to a precise definition. Instead of constructing the day according to the clock – for that is the way it was when you worked (tick tock, another meeting, stress, stress) – I want to base it on how you expend energy. As a model think of the electricity grid where you can either draw from it for your energy needs, or contribute to it from your solar panels’ power.

This framework poses a question: How will you allocate the energy of your day? Will you have periods of intense energy spent in a task, combined with restful activities where you re-charge, and even periods that are energy neutral? Now the day has a completely different flavour. The clock is no longer your master. This use of energy as a framework corresponds more closely to a division of the day into things you love doing and those that are a pain to you.

Isn’t this approach likely to reduce your stress in retirement?

Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.

Phases of retirement

Why should retirement consist of one uniform block of time in your life? Was your work life similarly monotone? Of course not, you shape-shifted through many tasks, jobs, perhaps careers. So you know about phases during your working life, and how a new phase of work may either be imposed on you from above, or you will plan for it.

I have written before about the importance of the first few years postwork when you are probably brim-full of plans, energy and good health. Let’s call this phase one of postwork.

Now consider the possibility of phase two of postwork. This may happen after about five years when you are ready for new challenges. My thought is that you could start to plan phase two before it comes knocking on your door.

Quite simply, you could review what you have achieved so far, say at year four, then evaluate and most importantly dream of future possibilities.

Don’t have phase two drop on you, plan for it, just as you did during your work life.

Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.

The truth about retirement

Suppose you are about to retire or have retired recently.

Do you believe that the best years of your retired life will unfold after you turn 90? If so, then read no further.

Do you imagine that every dream you have ever held about retirement, and how you will live it, will actually come true for you? If so, then read no further.

Are you entering a possible 30 years of retirement by just winging it, that is letting it happen to you? If so, then read no further.

Do you think that all your friends and family are waiting with open arms to accommodate you to your retirement, even though you haven’t given it much thought? If so, then read no further.

However, if you are still reading, then perhaps you feel that retirement can’t be that straightforward for you.

But, more importantly, the sooner you get to grips with what it means for YOU then the more that pleasure and stimulation will come your way.

Make the most of those early years of retirement whilst you have the health, mobility and motivation for it. This will come down to your personal search for meaning.

It’s not easy to discover this meaning all by yourself: but a retirement coach can help.

Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.

Authenticity

What would an authentic retirement look like, what would it contain, how would it feel?

I was surprised and a little disappointed to read in the dictionary that the word “authentic” has little to do with the word “author”.  Authentic derives from a Greek word meaning genuine, whilst author comes from a Latin word meaning to originate.

Then again authentic also means “proceeding from its reputed author”, so there is a connection after all.

Therefore as the reputed author of your retirement script: what will you write there? Will it look different from your working life; perhaps you will create a more authentic balance in your life than you have ever been able to achieve before?

Will you have more time for family and friends, hobbies and most of all will your stress levels decrease dramatically?

It’s your call but you may benefit from the services of a retirement coach who can help YOU to write your retirement script.

Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.

Measurement matters

Productivity is a very important matter in the world of the employed. Tote that barge, lift that bale; as the lyrics of the song had it, many years ago.

As a result in the world of work there is a strong focus on, and belief in, measurement; measurement of output, measurement of the effectiveness of an employee. It seems so rational compared with anything as old-fashioned as judgment; and we could have an argument over the merits of measuring versus judging as a way to assess an employee’s worth to a company.

But let’s not do that, and instead consider retirement. As a retired person, you can shuck of any sense of measuring your success, and swim with the tide, as you no longer have a boss.

And now for a practical example: learning a foreign language.

You could take all the exams and get all the certificates that you want and need: all good. But, and this is a CRITICAL difference, you could also simply work to improve your proficiency in your chosen foreign language: that is to slowly immerse yourself in the language and its associated culture. You won’t be able to measure your success, but that is OK, as you can form a judgment. And guess what: your stress levels will reduce because you are not being measured!

This is a radical distinction; as you have moved from measuring to judging your success.

At base, this is all about setting your expectations. The choice is yours. I would simply emphasise that in postwork (as distinct from when you had a boss) you can set your own expectations and work within those; you can even change them of your own volition, without a need to ask anyone for permission.

Retirement: you won’t know what it is like until you get there.

Choice and regret, there is more to say....

I discussed choice and regret earlier this year; writing that:

“To state the obvious, making a choice logically implies choosing NOT to do other things.”

Let’s try this little thought experiment. You chose career A and worked in that all your life. Now in late life – say aged 60 - you ask yourself could you have chosen career B instead and had a better life? This is a type of regret. We all feel regret from time to time, but in this case it’s a fallacy and here is why:

1)    At 60 you’ve never experienced career B so you can’t know what it would have been like for YOU. Yes you can read the memoirs of successful career B practitioners but that is their story not yours. You can’t know what the experience would have been for you. You can only hypothesise.

2)    Now imagine that you had chosen career B. There are consequences. You may now be living in a different house from your actual career A house. Good? Bad? Who knows?

So don’t feel regret. Think about it by all means but now, in retirement, try to move forward and experiment with different choices.

I hope that now you won’t fear the regret that comes from choice.

Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.

The philosopher Kieran Setiya has written eloquently on these matters.

Your balance sheet in retirement

Permit me to make a crude analogy. Your life in retirement will have its own balance sheet: that is assets and liabilities.

No I am not talking about money. In this article liabilities are your obligations and commitments. What might these be in postwork?

It could be that you have agreed to mind grandchildren on certain days of the week, until they become teenagers and the rulebook gets torn up. It might be the case that you have some board position or do some charity work.

However, as we know, balance sheets have to balance - so now let’s talk about assets, because this is where it gets interesting; as it’s a matter of optics.

You have this time in your life postwork. Ask yourself this question. Is it a gift to exploit where you learn new things, meet new people, expand your horizons; or is it a bore where time slowly ticks away, that gives you little pleasure, and even makes you anxious?

The choice is yours for both the assets and the liabilities on your personal balance sheet, postwork.

It has to be worth thinking about - don’t you think?

Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.

Time in retirement part 2

I wrote previously that when you are postwork a funny thing happens with time - it’s as if time stretches.  It means that you can feel very busy with your activities even though, by the standards of when you worked full-time, your diary may now look patchy and bare.

But time is a strange thing. Unlike vision and sound – which we perceive directly through eyes and ears – we can’t directly perceive time: we can only notice things around us that our brains then fit into a sequence of time.

What? If you are doing a boring job that causes you to look at your watch (substitute iphone) all day long, then you are measuring time in one way. If you are playing tennis with such joy and attention that you only notice the time when the next players ask to use the court, then that is another measure.

Here is a definition of time. It is the way that we record, think about and are struck by the movement of the events of life around us. Or, a trace of our memories of other things. So time is a very personal deduction from experience. And yet we think that the clock is a universal measure of time. It’s not that simple.

Our language reflects these very personal experiences of time: “I lost track of time”; “time weighed heavily on me”; “I have time to kill”; “time flies, doesn’t it”.

To return to my previous examples. If you spent a whole day only looking at the clock then you would judge that time went slowly; whereas if you spent the day captivated by some activity special to you then you would judge that time sped past. What about a year or a decade?  A different kettle of fish perhaps. This is a very timely question for a retired person.

In retirement you will have the time to think about these things.

Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.