RETIREMENT – ARE YOU STILL FLIP-FLOPPING AROUND

Being bold or unafraid seems to be an important part of the mix for a successful retirement. Every good recipe needs the right  ingredients to taste good but if you throw in the wrong stuff, some apprehension or fear, then the expected outcome can be entirely different and the cake turns into something you hardly recognise

With any life transition, there is a gradual easing into things though one thing is certain, it’s a time when our relationships, family and working life are undergoing many changes. Some folks get up one morning and know what they have to do, it’s easy, others agonize for years over the ‘how’ and never get to the ‘why’ flip-flopping around and eventually moving into stagnation.

So, before we jump anywhere and head off in a new direction, it’s super important to look around to see what’s been working well and what no longer serves you. It’s easy to get lost when life is in transition, making an uninformed choice can become incompatible with the very reason you decided to make the change in the first place.

There are many signposts along the way to retirement, uncertainty is there but also that niggling feeling that I’m getting old, all aspects of growth are slowing and things are physically and psychologically more challenging, there’s a kind of withdrawal happening, the cycle of one’s life is changing and acceptance is key.

“Safety is not a gadget it’s a state of mind.” Eleanor Everet

Safety often takes centre stage in terms of importance when making future decisions, taking precautions, understanding potential risks, and depending on your personality, inspiration and motivation can take very different directions. Fear cuts in to steal away our dreams and we can get panicky or spooked by our decisions and even our thoughts can spiral out of control.

Synchronicity is an amazing word to ponder, it shows up when you act from a deeper understanding of your purpose in life, there’s a sense of knowing that doesn’t require hours of thinking and analysis, you just know, you trust your gut. As a result, obstructions seem to fall away, you find chance encounters that tell you you’re heading in the right direction, and you may encounter positive actions by others that seem to acknowledge your decisions and it’s not at all coincidental….Some call this emotional intelligence.

Einstein knew that the universe would eventually stop expanding and when it did it would begin the reverse process, to contract and die before expanding once more with a ‘big bang’.There is no mathematical formula that can tell us ‘why we are here’ and it’s up to each of us to discover the absolute truth, the infinite that lies within and without.

Much of what we must resolve in old age is to reconcile the fact that by the time we’ve reached a comfortable place, one that’s taken a lifetime to develop, there comes the realisation that it’s almost over. The expansion and the contraction of the universe is also part of us, we are born only to die and that takes a lot of getting used to. How we manage this transition between these two bookends is the key.

If we can seize the opportunity before our decline gets too serious, we can begin to break through the veil of our ignorance and revive the joy in our lives. Our obsessive thinking separates us from everyone and everything, especially from our deeper selves, so that we remain alone even amongst a crowd of thousands. Retirement gives us time, time to connect, time to investigate our essence, and our purpose here on earth so let us get started on learning how to Retire Mindfully.