There are substantial amounts of dossiers declaring the neuroscience behind the premise that many of us are getting retirement all wrong, and they are very convincing. We are addicted to being busy, we haven’t deprogrammed our ‘achiever brain’, we are caught in a usefulness trap. I’ve been pouring over this type of article a lot lately and have subscribed to several of them. It makes perfect sense that people who have devoted their energy and mindset to their careers for decades have built a brain to cope with the many demands it requires. But we are being held hostage in an approach to life that is strangling us. We must get out!
I began taking notes, developing strategies and even setting up charts. I set my timer to remind me to get on with the next phase of my day – the leisure phase. I would read or walk or watch the birds for an hour, and then get back to the project at hand. Yup, I was clobbering retirement over the head as I strategized the balance of optimal joy and fulfilling usefulness. I was approaching the whole kit and kaboodle the exact same way I’ve strategized projects for years, complete with a business plan and even speaking notes, key messages if you will, to share my progress with friends.
Afterall, the transition to retirement doesn’t actually sound different than that of any other transition. Starts with the career ending – all that comes with stepping away from who you were. Messy middle – the uncomfortable in-between where the old is gone but the new hasn’t begun. The new beginning – you find your footing again. We must grow powerfully through each phase, they say. Got it, I think. One, two, three – go!!
Thing is, I never did feel much of an ending, since I started a part time job, several freelance contracts and this weekly column before I was even finished working full time. I figured I would just keep all these elements moving through the messy middle and eventually come out the other side to the new beginning, just as a matter of course. But I started getting an inkling over the winter that this didn’t feel like the right approach. I would need to work harder on this retirement thing.
Thus, the monthly personal challenges to ensure I’m growing older with an open mind. The quest, still, to spend the most productive hours of the day’s fresh new mornings at work in my home office. The scheduled reading to meet my leisure requirements, mostly the priority to be an intentional architect of a life that still matters, as described by Gary Fretwell, an expert on the aging brain.
Wait a minute, though. These were all items I was still scheduling into the same strategic mindset. Things that need to be accomplished. The goal, I’m thinking, is to reduce and then eliminate the scheduling mindset so that I can just ‘be’. I must move from ‘do’ to ‘be’. I don’t know – it has all become much more difficult to sort through than I first thought.
I’m thinking I took the first step, though, by unsubscribing to a site that shares job postings. I guess I can at least stop thinking about what I want to be when I grow up!