Retiring - A walk in the mountains

 

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• Twelve Retirement Challenges
• Retirement is something many of us look forward to with increasing impatience as it gets closer. Like a long-awaited holiday we chafe against the daily grind and get excited and make lots of plans, not expecting life after work to be a walk in the park. But when we finally get there we may find that it's a bit more like a walk in the mountains. It's not all downhill, there are some demanding climbs and some bleak crags to negotiate too.
• Apart from financial issues, which are covered ad nauseam in almost all the other blogs about retirement, there are certain challenges that are not so often discussed in any detail, that many if not most people find need some attention. In early retirement, many of us will find one or more changes to or uncertainties in our lives that are potential obstacles to our retirement joy. 
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• 1. Learning to relax into our new freedom
• We may have been thinking for years 'If only I could be free to do what I want with my time', but when we get to that point we are so much in the habit of doing what's expected of us, fitting in wth other people's timetable and other people's requirements, squeezing our lives into the edges of other things, that we don't know how to start orgnaising our own time and choosing activities driven only by our own wishes. It can feel strange, guilty, untethered, restless. 
• 2. Wondering how we're going to spend less while doing more at home
• While you are working, decisions about buying things are often driven more by a lack of time than a lack of money. So when you retire and the balance is reversed, there is an adjustment to make in the way that you think about spending, and the uncertainty during this transition can definitely keep you up at night.
• 3. More hours to fill
• Similarly, while you are going to work the problem with other activities is that there is never enough time for them, so you are likely to have narrowed down on your hobbies and interests, prioritising one or two and deferring those which are inconvenient for one reason or another. When you retire you have much more time so have a great opportunity to pursue activities that you were drawn to but have not had time for in the past. However you may well be starting from a beginner or relatively unskilled level for the first time in decades. Being a beginner again can challenge your self-esteem. And it is likely to take a while and some experimentation before you find activiites that you find rewarding. 
• 4. Fewer restrictions
• You might expect that having fewer fixtures in your life will allow you to become much more productive in your hobbies or other activities. Finally time to write the novel or take up sculpture. Life generally laughs at that idea, dmeonstrating fairly rapidly that it's often the very existence of a deadline that gives you motivation and energy towards it. For some people deciding on a new path and sticking to it will be the difficult thing. For others it might be getting anything finished, or getting started at all. It may take some time for you to work out a way of organising your day that works for you.
• 5. Losing our role 
• Even if you really never thought of yourself as the role you took at work, you may be surprised at how much you miss the place it gave you in society as a whole. Your job may be the first thing that people ask you when they meet you for the first time. So what do you say if you're retired that doesn't bring the conversation to a grinding halt? And what value do you have to the world if you are not earning a living? Can you hold your head up high? Do you even know who you are any more?
• 6. Guilt about not doing our bit
• If you got a lot of your self-worth from your work, you can find it particularly difficult to adjust to taking money from your pension or savings without working. For me the trouble was that I had a great deal of money spent on my long training. There is always a shortfall of doctors in the national health service and never any shortage of needy patients, so plenty of empty posts yearning to be filled. So I spent the first couple of years of my retirement feeling guilty that I wasn't working. In fact, I looked into a couple of jobs and it was only A kindly saying 'Are you crazy?' that made me take them no further. 
• 7. Feeling isolated 
• It is very common to retire and then realise how much you miss seeing the same people every day. Even if they weren't your friends exactly, your coworkers brought a sense of belonging and shared endeavour, or even the sour cameraderie of being in the shit together. For some people this loss of belonging can be so difficult for them that it's enough to send them back to work, even if they don't really want to. 
• 8. Declining energy and physical health
• It is likely that prior to retirement you will have had an experience of reduced energy and perhaps early signs of the physical decline that often accompanies old age, either in yourself or in your nearest and dearest. This experience brings with it other adjustments to expectations and possibilities. The loss of some options for the future, and worries about that. A growing understanding that life is finite. Although my retirement started with ill health I am sure that there is much more to come in the way of adjustment to physical decline than I have yet seen in my life.
• 9. Loss of confidence
• Because your life changes in so many ways when you retire, and because it can take some time to find a group of like-minded people in a similar life position to you, it can feel as if you are the only person in this situation and that you're not coping very well with it. If you don't realise that it's completely natural to respond in this way to so many changes and so much uncertainty, and you may start believing there's something wrong with you or you wouldn't find it so much of a challenge.
• 10. Adjusting our relationship with the people we live with
• If you have a spouse, elderly parents or other people at home with you, the fact of having you at home all day is going to change the way the whole household works. Some renegotiation of roles and rules is going to be required if you are going to achieve the basic routine and independence you need for a happy life without impinging on theirs. And this is going to be more or less difficult depending on who they are and how you relate to them in general. 
• 11. Adjusting to a different kind of diet and exercise goal
• For most of our adult lives we can have exercise goals that are potentially extremely ambitious - a whole day of dancing, a triathlon, swimming the channel, running seven marathons in seven days, whatever we can imagine is something we can work towards. Of course our physical make-up will have some influence on what we are actually able to achieve, but given the right dedication and training the sky is almost the limit.  
• However, at some point in our lives exercise stops being like that. We reach a point where whatever consistent and well designed training we do our physical capacity will begin to shrink. We may have doctors' orders to do certain things, or to stop doing others.
• At the same time it is more important than ever that we build and maintain as much fitness as we can in order to stay strong, active, flexible and resilient for as long as we possibly can. So how can we reconcile to and work with these truths? 
• 12. Finding meaning and purpose in retirement
• In this new life stage, the meaning you bring to your life may have to change. And your purpose also, if your life purpose was job-related like providing for your family, or doing something worthwhile for the world. You may find other ways of helping your family or the world. Or you may even find that you can transcend this kind of purpose altogether through developing new perspectives on what life is and why you are here.

Over to you

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• So, wow, that's a long list. And I expect you could tell me some more challenges you are facing. But I don't want to you to read this whole thing and think it's all terribly negative and depressing. Let me tell you that all these topics can lead to ideas that can change your persective and a more confident, pleasurable post-work life. Which I will be discussing more in future posts.
• I would be delighted to hear from you any particular issues you would like me to cover, any solutions you have found helpful, or in fact any (reasonably polite) comments at all!