Transition to Retirement - Eleven Tips (424 words)

1. Figure out your key motivators - what drives you. Is it change and variety, or settled conditions? Is it learning new things, or going back to old hobbies that gave you great pleasure.
2. Start to cultivate friendships in areas other than your work and field of work. Look over your circle of friends. Is your circle too big or too small? Are there people you've grown away from and others you would like to get to know more intensely? You can get stuck in a rut with your friendships as well.
3. If you plan to do something radically different with your life, remember that other people's fears or negative blocks can be projected onto your situation. If you decide to take on a big mortgage, fear-based friends might say the market is about to collapse. Make your own decisions.
4. Look at all the things that you have. Are they serving you well? What emotional needs did you satisfy by buying them? Have you grown beyond those needs now? Your beautiful home and possessions can give you much pleasure and represent how far you have come. However, you are not your possessions.
5. Who are you and what do you want to do with your time? Visualize your ideal day, week or month. Then, do it. If you can't, figure out why. Well, maybe finances preclude that you can't travel around the world for a year on a luxury yacht, but if you want to travel, for example, there are dozens of ways to do it.
6. Action is what moves you forward. One hour of action is worth ten hours of navel-gazing. All the wrongs that happened in your past can still affect you today, or you can put them to bed and move on. Do you really still want to be thinking about old stuff today, continuing to be an injured bird? Fly on. The decision can be instantaneous. You do not have to analyze forever. Just live differently.
7. Take care of your health. It is all you have.
8. Stop and listen to your own voice and chatter. Be kind to yourself and others.
9. Volunteer and give freely of your time, not as a martyr, as some are, but as an expression of your positive emotions and goals.
10. Read a few more books, especially those which challenge your perceptions of life.
11. If you want to be happy, be happy. It can be simple or complicated. Make your choice. Be happy.

Mahara Sinclaire, M.Ed.
© Mahara Sinclaire, 2010

Mahara Sinclaire, M. Ed. Is the author of The Laughing Boomer: Retire from Work – Gear Up for Living! available from www.laughingboomer.com.  She was a college and university educator and has presented hundred of workshops on a variety of topics, including retirement planning workshops.  But what people are most interested in is Mahara and her husband’s two year, forty-three country, round-the-world travel odyssey.  Contact her at 604-210-2025, mahara@laughingboomer.com or visit www.laughingboomer.com.

mahara@laughingboomer.com
424 words