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Are your retirement options dull?
After 50 years or more of life it get pretty easy to predict our every action. There just aren’t any surprises left. Maybe we get comfortable. Maybe we just give up and drift. There isn’t any excitement left and nothing that causes us to jump out of bed each morning eager to face the day. It is easy to rationalize that the good times are past. Nothing new or exciting is going to happen. Life is over. I can understand that thinking because I have been there. I’ve been knocked around. I’ve been discouraged. I’ve been tempted to say that I’m done and accept my dull, humdrum life. That is what most people do. But I’m not ready to quit yet.
Successful aging means being free to act.
I’m not giving up yet and I hope that you aren’t either. There are things left to do. Friends that I haven’t met and places I haven’t seen. More important, the person that I have been in my life up to now. the person formed by my roles and responsibilities is only a small part of who I really am and who I can be. I have been blind to that other guy for most of my life, pandering, sucking up and putting up a front to get by but once in a while I get a quick glimpse of the other guy under the facade, the guy I should have been. He is a guy with passion and excitement about life. He is much more appealing than the mealy mouthed schlub most people recognize as me but he has been hidden under a facade for most of my life. My goal in retirement is to crack that facade and let the real me free.
Make them say “Who is that guy?” about you.
I’m going to measure my success in retirement on letting my passions free. Finding new activities and learning new skills. Making new friends. One measure of my retirement success will be ow much I can surprise people that knew me before retirement. I want those people who think they know who I am to say “Who is hat guy?” That will be my measure of success.
I think that each one of us has a surprising guy underneath. A guy who has gone into hiding after long years of compromise. Retirement is a good time to let him free. Retirement doesn’t mean that life is over. Give yourself permission to dream again. You know that you have dreams yet to be accomplished. You aren’t finished. You are beginning and the energy and passion that you show will make everyone say about you. “Who is that guy?”
Start today
Search inside yourself for a passion you thought was dead. Do these two things:
- Visualize yourself taking action to live that passion
- Take a small first step.
Maybe you start by doing research – reading a book or a website but start. You know what to do. Then leave a comment and tell how you feel. Maybe you surprised yourself. Share the feeling.
