Do you know the “best self” that you have always sought to become? The one that always has a consistent list of tasks that eats right is the soul of the company and is always full of energy. This person skillfully combines family and friendship pastime and time for personal affairs. A unique creature that cannot be led astray during the implementation of important projects and has only a positive effect on others.
This is the man whom you have been pursuing for years and now, when you retire or this event is already looming on the horizon, you finally have a chance to become one. But there is one problem - you will not find this person and you will not be retired. You have been brainwashed so that you believe that the pension will bring you the missing ingredients to become this ideal person, but this is just an illusion.
The perfect magic pension won't happen
I am not writing this to tell you that retirement sounds bad or terrifying, or suggest you die in the workplace. In fact, retirement is one of the most anticipated periods of a person’s life, but at the same time the most misunderstood. I devoted the last 12 years to studying each of its aspects and not only wrote several books about it, but also created an initial training program for professionals to help other people better prepare for the transition to this long-awaited phase of life.
In a nutshell, I call this work vaccination of people the reality of retirement. Just as we pass on immunity to our children, we need to tell people about the negative aspects of life after working in personal retirement plans. Thus, they will be better aware of all those things that can happen in retirement (not only good ones), as well as more time to prepare their bodies and mind for protection from them.
Up to this point, people have been accustomed to thinking that retirement is a happy place where everything happens by magic. Where can they finally become the person whom they have been striving for all their lives. But the mere disappearance of work from your life will not ensure this. People should understand that a pension does not eliminate work; it will reorient it. You still have to work, just in a different way, including transforming your personality, creating new relationships, social connections, and maintaining physical health.
This is interesting because, as statistics show, to which I like to resort, 65% of criminals who escaped from prison are caught in 24 hours. 85% of them catch by the end of the first week. The reason is simple. They spend all their time and all their efforts to get out, and when they find themselves behind the wall, they do not know what to do next. This is very similar to traditional retirement planning and therefore it must change.
Same thing with people. The ideal person whom you pursued all your life will not appear before you magically in retirement. Not having to go to work or attend boring meetings will not make you happier, more energetic, or satisfied, which means you will be disappointed or even depressed.
Are pensioners really happy?
But wait, what about the latest survey, which demonstrates that 80% or even 90% of people are retired? Well, this means 90% of respondents, and not the entire population in retirement. Think for a second, if people are unhappy in retirement, will they tell the truth about it?
The answer is no because of the social stigma that we have tied to this concept.We are convinced that work is bad and leisure is good, and therefore, when people have enough money to no longer work, and all the time of the world to do what they like, we as a society say that they should be are happy. But it's not always the case. People can miss their way of life, friends at work, deadlines, opportunities to be part of a team or have a certain rank.
Unfortunately, you cannot tell anyone about this, fearing that you will be considered strange or inappropriate from the point of view of public recognition of the achievement of retirement. As a result, people suffer in silence. They don’t know who to turn to, and they often waste the first and most valuable year of retirement trying to figure it out.
Retirement plan
This is a serious problem and the reason why rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, depression and suicides among older people continue to grow. Unfortunately, no one conducts surveys about who starts drinking alcohol more in retirement, becomes addicted to painkillers, feels isolated, or thinks about harming himself or committing suicide. And in truth, I don’t think that many people would admit it.
But this happens very often and therefore we must proclaim that retirement is not the ideal place where you will finally feel like the person whose illusion you have been pursuing all your life. The opportunity here is to let people know that since they have a written plan for their finances, as they are approaching retirement, it should be the same with non-financial aspects.
They need a written plan that includes the mental, social, physical, and spiritual aspects of a pension. I am talking about specific plans and ideas that would replace their employee identity, fill up time, allow them to remain in demand and included in society, as well as mentally and physically active.
Think about your retirement
Please understand, I do not enjoy these ideas or the sufferings of people, but I have not seen a decent retirement in which there would be no difficult parts. As I often say, successful retirement is not the absence of problems, but a situation in which you learn to overcome them.
My goal is to make you more prepared for the successful transition from working life to home. The key to you will be the adoption of this advice and the allocation of time and energy to develop a written plan of how your daily life will look like in retirement. The time has come to end the pursuit of this illusion of a better retirement life and begin to take steps to realize it right now.
This way begins with opening oneself to new ideas and thoughts about retirement, then an understanding of the problem of a lack of money fades in comparison with a lack of family, friends, health and time.