Moving into your third chapter in life brings a lot of opportunity for self-exploration and moving in new directions. How do you choose to navigate through the transition? How might this transition help you show up in full expression of a new part of yourself?

When and How Does it Begin?
We often talk about retirement starting on the date we leave our career or business. It really is more of a process than a date. There are different phases of the process that people commonly experience. There's no absolute best formula for how to make the transition. Each person will have their own path and many simply intuit their way through it.

If you're curious about what's ahead or feel like something you've moved through it and something  is a bit unsettled, let's look at five stages of this transition. You may not experience all five, and you may do more than one at once. These can go in random order, sometimes because life happens along the way and you have new circumstances to work through. You may find cycles you repeat within these stages, maybe multiple times. Think about where you find yourself or have found yourself in these stages:

#1. The Exit Strategy
The move toward retirement starts a lot earlier than your departure date, unless your retirement came through no choice of your own. If you have poured your life and identity into your career, you may especially find this stage more extensive. The anticipatory process may include:

• Pondering when it's the right time to retire. This wondering often comes and goes for a few years before it actually is time. It allows you to begin to get other parts of your life ready.
• Developing a strategy for what departure looks like for your organization. If you are a leader, a smooth organizational transition is part of your consideration. A formal exit strategy and succession plan begins years before departure. For some, it is as simple as putting in your required notice to leave your position. And yes, you could simply not show up one day.
• Developing a strategy for what departure looks like for you. For example, will you convert to working fewer hours? Will you work in a different position for a time? Will you time it so you depart at the end of a project or event? How does it sync up with your investments and health care plan? If you have a spouse or partner, how does the timing work with their life and/or work?
• Thinking through, on a high level, what you want to do next (rather than just what you don't want to do any more). What do you want to take forward from your work to use in some other way? What have you been putting off doing? What fun events, including travel, do you want to plan? How do you imagine what life will look like once you are not doing this work?
• Getting emotionally ready for a major overhaul of your routine and focus. How will the cycle of your days change? How will your social circle change? What will be in its place? Is there anything you want to start creating before your retire?

Many folks can hardly wait for their official retirement date. Others have some trepidation or don't have a picture for what's going to happen next.

#2. Retirement Day and The Honeymoon
There may be lots of fanfare and good-byes. You may quietly just walk away one day. Or your job may simply end, possibly sooner than or not in the way you expected or wanted. (I will talk about the unique process in the case of unplanned retirement in another blog.)

The next day you begin to take a rest and celebrate all the things you don’t have to do any more: commuting, getting up early, packed schedules, and possibly shaving for some folks like David Letterman. You get to do all the things you’ve been waiting to do—travel, golf, bike, spend time with family, hobbies, cleaning out closets that have been neglected. Ah, this is the life!

For some folks, life feels great for many years to come. Others wake up one day, a few months or a couple of years into retirement with a vague restlessness or a yearning and realize there has to be more to life, which ushers in the next stage (or increases the urgency).

#3. The Quest and Vision
For some, this stage is almost panic-filled, and for others it is a slow musing that goes on a little each day.

You may find some of these questions circling: What will I do that gets me out of bed in the morning and gives me purpose to my day? What am I not doing now that I used to love doing? Who am I now that I'm not a (insert your professional identity). What do I feel called to contribute to the world? What size do I want that to be? Where can I learn something new? What is waiting for expression in me? What social needs do I need to fill? Is it at home or out in the world? How does it add balance and meaning to my life?

This is a great opportunity to intentionally look at your whole life going forward and see how the pieces fit: your physical and mental health, your spirituality, your hobbies, your social responsibility, your community, your family and your friendships.

Does what's calling you become work of some sort and involve unretiring? Does it involve volunteer work? Is it something you do on your own or with others? What kind of plan do you need to make? What are your guideposts for how you prioritize if you have a lot of things you want to do?

#4. The Plan
Once you begin getting clear on something you know you want to do, there may be a planning stage. Some plans are only as involved as picking up the phone and making a call or finding a groove you fit into.

Others will come up with something that takes more planning, for example starting a new business or writing a book or even doing an overhaul on health habits and lifestyle. As you get an idea of what that added focus in life will look like, what do you need to do to make it happen? Getting clear about your 'why' and your 'what' and your 'when' will help you be clear about your objectives.

A great plan increases the impact of your time as you begin doing. How does it impact the other parts of your well-being? How does it affect the people in your life? What do you have to give up to do something else?  How can this change with you as you age?

#5. Living,  Tweaking, Celebrating
As you begin incorporating your plan into life, what markers do you put in place to help assess along the way whether your plan is indeed happening? Is it a great fit for your life? Are you staying healthy doing it? What you thought might or might not fit may surprise you as you begin living it. It's just fine to change your mind one or ten times...this is retirement!

We can easily forget to take time in the present moment to notice how grand our todays are. How will you celebrate that great fit or challenge or stretching each day? Be intentional about it as a health practice. Be in your days.

Your True Expression
How you move through these stages and exploration enables you to move into a time that can be the richest of your life. It isn’t simply about being done with your career and winding down. It is about beginning the part of your life that can be the truest expression of you...your second mountain or your further journey. How will you choose to show up in it?

Questions for Reflection and Comment (I love to hear from you!)

• What stage(s) are you currently working through? Which have you already traveled? Are there any that don't seem necessary for you?
• What might you need to do to be finished with your career (whether retirement is ahead of you or behind you)? What aspects or skills or people do you want to continue to have in your life?
• What, if anything, is calling out to you to think more about or to take on in your life (even if it feels a bit daunting or frightening)?
• Are you giving time to doing something that if you were honest, isn't a fit any longer?
• If you have been retired for a while, have things happened differently than you expected? How have you needed to change your plan?

A part of my vision is to help create community around this stage of life. In what ways would connecting with other people approaching or living retirement be helpful for you?

There's More to Life.

Ruth Tongen helps people take stock, plan and live retirement in a bigger, happier, healthier way. She helps people move past sticking points and begin living with clarity.
E-mail her: [email protected] with questions or to explore how she may be of help to you.

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More to Life is all about pondering, planning and living the next great chapter of your life in retirement. For some folks, that is about slowing down and enjoying life and spending more time with family. Others see it as a time for climbing new peaks, finally doing something they’ve always wanted, or starting on a whole new passion or career (unretiring). Regardless of the shape, More to Life is always about more meaning and joy and health for your life.
 
True Retirement Planning
When you google ‘retirement planning’, you’ll find the first several pages of hits will be about financial planning. But where and how are we planning what we deeply want to do so we know how much money that will or won’t require? Why do we let money dictate what we can do rather than vice versa?

This is true retirement planning: What do you want for your life every day? What’s undone that’s calling out to you? How do you reshape your life after you’ve given it all to your career? How and when do you make your exit? Where do you find community? How do you stay well, get healthier, or make the most of the health you have? What can you plan now for later stages of retirement?
 

 A Rich and Fascinating Stage of Life
This stage of life has been a fascination for me for more than 30 years. My parents’ generation (born in the earlier 20th century) wrestled with what to do in retirement. Many found they were living longer and in better health than prior generations. There was no model for what to do with what had, prior to that, been a rather brief stage of life. I witnessed many people, my father among them, go through the motions of each day without much purpose or anything that lit them up. I’ve seen the health toll of that. I’ve also witnessed others, my mother among them, begin to take on a whole new set of interests and the new dimensions that developed out of that. How do you want this next chapter to be for you? 

Today, we assume most of us will have more retirement years. Some of us fall into these years quite naturally. My friend, Maxine, can hardly wait to get out of bed each morning because every day is so juicy. Others of us lose our footing, at least for a time, because so much of our identity and energy and friendships were tied up in our career. Some of us wake up one day after doing all the things we’ve wanted to do for a couple of years, and are now hungry for something else that puts more purpose in our days.
 
How Did I End Up Here?
I have spent much of my life working in health care, starting out in and loving geriatrics. It inspired me to begin working upstream, becoming more focused on healthy and preventive living earlier in life as a means to an end. I have also worked with organizational and personal strategy and transition for 25 years.

Retirement (or unretirement) transition is the perfect confluence of passions for me. The More to Life process combines moving through a major transition and aligning what’s important to you with healthy living. And doing what we love and is important to us is one of the best health practices we can take on at this or any stage!

Meanderings
This Meanderings blog space will focus on planning, transitioning, resetting course, and healthy living in retirement—if we will even call it retirement. I like to ask the question, “How do we live in alignment with what is important to us as a means to a healthier life?”
 
I look forward to covering lots of rich territory with you in this space, whether you are retired or musing about retirement. Many of these topics will touch you even if you aren’t at that stage yet—because new beginnings come at every age.

Leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you.
Share your reflections on retirement transition. Where and how have you struggled or been thriving in planning or living retirement? What has been your biggest discovery so far? What are you looking forward to?

There's More to Life.

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