Making Happiness a Part of Your Retirement Plan

Most people’s retirement focus – if they’re planning their retirement at all – is financial. But many retirees, even those with a healthy nest egg, find themselves unhappy for the final stretch of their lives. In transitioning away from the working world, mental management is as much a part of post-retirement life as financial management. After all, it’s a life changing experience.

Expectation is the root of happiness, so a big part of building a rewarding post-labour life involves cultivating your mental landscape around realistic actionable hopes. Here are some problems you can expect, and some strategies for dealing with them.

The Problem: Lack of Preparation

It’s not uncommon for retirees to step into a relaxation-filled life of leisure and find themselves bored. Sitting on a beach is not all it’s cracked up to be after a few months!

Paired with this is an identity shift; for many, careers define lives (what’s your name, and what do you do?), and without a career, a part of who you are might be gone.

The Solution: Take It Easy Taking It Easy

Avoid a sharp transition from work to retirement if you can. Try to work out a progressive retirement plan, phasing from one lifestyle to another. The adaptation will be more natural, and you’ll be happier in retirement quicker than adjusting to too drastic a switch.

Don’t underestimate how much working as much as you have has defined what your mind expects. Even if you’re sure you’re more than ready to get out of the working world, humans are creatures of habit, and it simply takes time for much of the mind to adjust.

Plan activities to try, with or without family and friends. Art, volunteering, senior travel, writing groups, and more are likely available. Check community centers, and search online for something fun. They will help define your new life, and keep you from boredom and disappointment. Don’t count on relaxing for a while, then figuring it out. Especially if you’re cutting your career cold turkey, start something new soon after.

The Problem: Even Busier Than Before

Many retirees find themselves more busy in their retirement than in their working life, and have trouble balancing things they’ve wanted to do, and a general philosophy of slowing down they were ready to embrace. While the new productivity is refreshing, it may put harmful stress on a body seeking rest.

The Solution: Do the Math

Think about the things you’d like to accomplish; short, medium, and long term retirement goals. Then, put time into researching how much time these endeavours should take, factoring in that you might not be as able-bodied as you are now. Then consider your general pace hopes against how your schedule stacks up, and make sure they’re similar. Work out realistic timelines, especially if you plan on engaging in many activities at once


The Problem: Declining Health

While retirement life can be a great way to relax and revitalize, retirees are, unfortunately, at risk for life-changing medical conditions. With the usual questions of health and retirement based around how long you “expect to live” versus your available finances, the incapacitating aspect of illness, especially when retirement is seen as an opportunity to explode into a new life, can create heavy disappointment when an ambitious list of retirement goals becomes suddenly out of reach.

The Solution: Don’t Plan Too Far Ahead

First of all, take care of yourself as much as you can, pre- and post-retirement. Once you have retired, though, make a plan that is solid on the next few steps, but loose on what’s to come. Make sure you make a genuine, active, thought-about mental distinction between hope and expectation, keeping goals realistic.

The Problem: Sustained Interest and Enjoyment

With a sustained focus on retirement activities during the working part of life, it’s easy to cultivate a grass-is-greener bias towards how great the retirement life will be. Ideas and visions become idealized, and it’s difficult to meet high expectations, never mind deal with unexpected day-to-day difficulties.

The Solution: Maintain Perspective, Test, and Diversify

Again, part of the issue is having the right expectations. If it’s new to you, you can’t be sure how much it will be satisfying on the most important, fundamental levels. Don’t rule out the possibility that you might not actually enjoy your plan once you’re actually living it.

Another option is to devote pre-retirement time testing your future life in small doses. If you plan to sit on the beach repairing sailboats, give it a try for a few days in a row and try to get a sense of how much of it will be enough, and too much.

Also try not putting all your eggs in one basket. Don’t start too intensive, and allow yourself to enjoy a few avenues for entertainment, stimulation, and productivity. Your working life forced you to give disproportionate attention to one career (at a time, at least). In retirement, there’s no reason why you can’t plan many small things, far from undertaking a big new project or starting a new, heavy venture.