Retirement: Open to the Good Stuff

Source: Gary Simonds/ Personal Photo

As previously explored, retirement can carry significant emotional strain and risk precipitating unexpected angst and dissatisfaction. This can be countered with a focus on wellness throughout our working lives and an awareness of all that can be experienced and enjoyed during this new stage of life.

Reconnection With Self

Many retirees report that they had put on professional masks throughout their careers, becoming actors on the stage of their work environments. These work personas are often markedly different from the “person inside,” resulting in a state of tension and a loss of contact with one’s self. Retirement allows people to shed their work costumes and rediscover the passions, interests, needs, and desires held at arm’s length for so long. I, for example, found myself writing books and pieces like this.

Source: Gary Simonds/ Personal Picture

Personal Growth

Throughout our careers, we all become specialists. Hours and hours focused on the same tasks, building the same competencies, and honing the same skills. Great for efficiency, but not so hot for the expansion of our intellectual and emotional selves. With retirement, the world becomes an open book. We can study and immerse ourselves in anything. We are no longer narrowing our perspective but are blowing it wide open. A surgeon friend of mine is studying nuclear physics. Many retirees report that they are so busy pursuing their new interests that they run out of time in their days.

Turning Emotions Back On

Many of us switch off our emotions at work. A cold, dispassionate approach to the job at hand often improves efficiency, productivity, and outcomes—do you want your surgeon, for example, to get all weepy or uptight in the middle of your operation? But do this enough, and we go numb. And this emotional blunting can bleed into the rest of our lives. Retirement allows us to get back in touch with our emotional selves. To feel things more deeply. To experience life with more color. To cry more, but also to laugh more. Several report an emotional rebirth. I, having never shed a tear during my decades as a surgeon, find myself tearing up over music, stories, and the glory of a beautiful sunset.

Source: Gary Simonds/ Personal Photo

Reconnection With Family, Friends

This may take some effort, but it bears fruit. We may have, in service to our omnipresent careers, allowed many of our most meaningful relationships to atrophy. But now, nothing is holding us back from reconnecting with the people we hold dear, as well as developing all new relationships. Yes, there can be some initial hesitation, inertia, and even embarrassment, but many report that upon making the effort, even after decades of disconnection, their relationships rapidly blossomed—as if no time had elapsed between contacts. Many have also commented on how liberating it is to develop whole new friendships predicated on mutual interests rather than work settings.

End of Sacrifice of Body and Soul

We all do it in one form or another. Sacrifice our physical and emotional beings upon the altar of the job. I lost a full night’s sleep every third or fourth night for 35 years. There is no telling what that did to my body, but I have a pretty good idea of what it did to my psyche. But such self-abuse is no longer necessary. Retirement is a wonderful time for tending to both body and soul. Hit the gym. Hit the library. Go to church. Swim. Hike. Meditate. Many report feeling better overall—less sore, stronger, more energized, more positive—than they have in years.

Release From Perpetual Demand

Most work entails a certain level of stress. Often bucket loads. The classic workplace is a study of high demand, low control, and absent support. The conscientious carry the stress of ever-increasing expectations upon their shoulders for decades. Upon retirement, it may take some intentionality and effort to downshift, but upon doing so, many find supreme pleasure in simply being. No quotas, overbearing bosses, spreadsheets, or life-and-death decisions. We become our own bosses, and we dictate our deliverables. The release from the incessant stress, great or small, becomes delightfully palpable.

Source: Gary Simonds/ Personal Photo

Release From Bad Outcomes

Just as most of us labor under unceasing demands of productivity, we also do so under demands of performance, often peak performance, perhaps even perfect performance. And we ultimately sustain mishaps, mistakes, and bad outcomes. Bad outcomes can haunt us for days, weeks, maybe years. They may visit us in our dreams or keep us from sleeping altogether. But with retirement, the stakes are immediately softened. Mistakes have far less fallout. If we don’t get to watering the lawn, nobody is hurt, millions aren’t lost, the world moves along, and we sleep more peacefully.

Balance

Most of us are plagued throughout our careers with an unremitting desire to lead a “balanced life.” As noted in previous pieces, if we use allotted time as a measure of success in maintaining balance, we feel like failures. Work always wins out, and we seethe under the tyranny of the ticking clock. With retirement, time becomes plentiful. Balance can be separated entirely from the entity. Balance becomes a function of our interests. With a little creativity, that constant angst over fear of missing out (FOMO) is dissipated.

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Source: Gary Simonds/ Personal Photo

Rediscovering the World Around Us

One day, during my first several months of retirement, I commented to my wife that there seemed to be an unusual amount of birdsong about. She replied that it was spring and that there was always a lot of birdsong. It was just that I had been holed up in the hospital for all my previous springs. Many retirees likewise report a whole new enjoyment of the lovely things, places, and people going on around them and come to appreciate all that life has to offer.

Giving Back

Many retirees report great satisfaction in giving back to their communities through various volunteer activities, activities that were out of reach when their schedules were jam-packed. They report a great sense of meaning and fulfillment by bringing their talents and efforts to much-needed projects.