- Image by Noodle93 via Flickr
If you are retired, ready to retire, thinking about retiring or just tired, then you have been around the block a few times. You are not a spring chicken. You have some wear on your treads and you have hit many of life’s potholes. You have been thrown from your horse but you got back on. You upped your game and kept on keeping on. You coped. You survived. After all that you probably feel pretty comfortable with life and your ability to handle whatever it throws at you. Those life lessons have prepared you to move into or through your retirement years successfully. Or have they?
If you cringed at all the cliches in the last paragraph then I accomplished my goal. I got your attention. Writing teachers tell us to avoid cliches because they represent overworked ideas or relationships that have lost meaning through overuse. Cliches are an easy out when you don’t want to actually think about something. They are filler. They are dull and expected. They are comfortable. They are an easy response when we don’t want to risk offending; when we want to go with the flow.What cliches don’t do is electrify, excite and stimulate.
My point is simple. Living life we pick up behaviors and responses that are like cliches. They are habitual. They are safe. They have zero meaning or significance. But even beyond that simple truth. Whatever you learned while building a career and raising a family must be challenged now that you are retired. What does your life up to now teach you now that you are retired? It is time to look at your life and ask if you are living a cliche. Is you life composed of activities that build your ideal retirement lifestyle or filled with activities that you acquired earlier for a different purpose. Does everything you do focus on who you want to be in retirement? Do you know why you get up in the morning? Do you have an intent to your actions and responses? Is your life on autopilot? Or do you have an action plan that excites you each day?
