BALANCE YOUR LIFE FOR A GREAT RETIREMENT
Naturally, everyone I know wants to be happy during retirement. But happiness during retirement doesn't "just happen" any more than your financial security or career success just happened. If you want to have an enjoyable retirement, you need to prepare psychologically just as much as you prepare financially.
In an earlier article, I discussed your need to replace some
of the important intangibles of work: social connection, status, time management, and your sense of usefulness. These will be important factors if you want to make a smooth transition to the next stage of your life.
Actually, there are fifteen psychological factors associated with a thriving retirement, and your retirement success is dependent on how well you are prepared on each factor. There's
not room to list all fifteen factors here, but an important one is your current life satisfaction. In short, if you aren't happy now, retirement probably won't be the magic bullet that changes things. You will be better off taking a close look at all parts of your present life so you can start working on the "life arenas" that need improvement.
You have a very good chance of feeling happy when your
life is balanced, meaning that you get satisfaction from these six important life arenas:
Career: Your current career or your new retirement career - an activity that brings meaning and purpose into your life
Family: Your interactions with your primary and extended family
Relationships: Your close as well as casual relationships
with people outside of your family
Self: Your relationship with you - your self-esteem, learning, and personal growth, as well as your relationship with your body - how well you take care of yourself
Spiritual: Your relationship with something greater than yourself and, often, greater than humanity
Leisure: The ways you rest from the other five life arenas - what you do when you don?t want to do anything else
Here is an exercise that will help you create the balance
that you need. Draw a large circle on a piece of paper and divide
it evenly into a six-slice pie diagram. Give one of the six life
arena titles above to each slice.
Turn off your TV and cell phone, close your door, take a
deep breath and slowly let it out. Create a private mental space where you can relax without interruption. Then, think about how satisfied you are now with one of your life arenas and mentally assign a number between zero (totally unsatisfied) and ten
(totally satisfied) to your level of satisfaction. Put a solid line inside the appropriate slice in the diagram, parallel to the outer edge, to indicate your level of satisfaction, with zero at the
center and ten at the perimeter. Do the same with the remaining five arenas.
Next, do the exercise again on the same diagram, but this time record how satisfied you want to be after you retire. Draw a dotted line in each arena to indicate your hoped-for level of satisfaction.
Look closely at what you have charted. You will see how balanced or out of balanced your life is right now. You will also
see the arenas that you need to concentrate on in order to feel happy and fulfilled during the next major stage of your life.
Finally, make a list of specific actions that you will take to improve your satisfaction in each life arena. Make a specific plan. Talk to your spouse, to your friends, to a psychologist or coach -anybody who can help. Learn what you can do by reading and taking courses or workshops.
Retirement can be the best years of your life. Chances are you will be healthier and live longer than your parents and grandparents. You will probably have more financial resources
than they did too. Seeking balance among these six life arenas
now and when you retire will help you be as happy as you could possibly be.
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© Copyright 2009. All Rights Reserved. This is a revision based on my article "Balance Your Life for a Great Retirement," which appeared in Pennsylvania Business Central on February 4, 2005.
