The way you think, your mindset, affects every aspect of your life. Your attitudes and the beliefs you hold will reflect every decision you make, regardless of whether you’re ready to consider retirement options, ongoing personal relationships or attitudes toward money. These values can be held onto very tightly and will, therefore, direct how you think and act. Ultimately, your values will determine whether you approach life with a positive view or if you tend towards depression. Thoughts can be a heavy burden or a place of peace, our mindset may become the difference between achieving success or not.

It is because our opinions shape how we deal with life around us that it will become fundamental for us to find a calm centre in our everyday life. When all the confusion has died down, the question remains “am I excited about the future, or am I feeling a bit anxious, even depressed about what the future holds”. Our bodies may age but our minds can change if we believe in ourselves and are sincere about what decisions we are about to make.

Confining our thinking about dealing with our financial goals no longer presents us with the whole picture of what retiring means, especially when we realise that we are living much longer and healthier lives. In many cases, retirement will add up to over a third of our entire lifespan, so it’s not unusual to hear people saying they don’t want to retire and are happy to keep working longer. Having a job you love is amazing but increasingly there is a wide range of issues that often create doubt and anxiety which makes people question their decision to not quit working. These thoughts can weigh heavily on our ability to move forward if we keep pushing them away.

The way you think and feel about yourself will have a massive impact on which path you follow. Each of us will have to define in our own terms, what it means to retire. The dynamics will be different for everyone but I prefer to use the term a lifestyle change to define what’s happening.. Retirement is simply not what it used to be, there’s no more flashy gold watches, jobs for life and the generous pension plans have all become a thing of the past….

The main reason people give when saying why they don’t want to retire is a lack of savings and inadequate health benefits and no one could argue with such sensible logic but their overall happiness factor is never included in the calculation. Sometimes people are just scared of what’s in front of them and the uncertainty is killing them. 

Our best intentions to stay at work can be upset by events that we never saw coming, so let’s consider the following examples:

*A sudden health scare 

*A global pandemic emerges

*Technology pushing us out the door

*A financial crisis that affects our industry, creating layoffs

*Age discrimination

So even though many people say they plan to work past 65 and perhaps never retire, the reality of change and uncertainty often turns out to be very different from what had been planned. 

The nature of our modern world is pushing us towards re-defining what it means to be retired. It’s never too late to start, but we need to work out how to get comfortable in our own skin and not be living to fulfil the expectations of others. A mindful approach to retirement will help to create a more calm space and a simpler approach to how we look at life. We’re living in a stressful time and with so many demands it can be easy to lose the connections to ourselves and to the things that really matter most….mindfulness can lead you to a more relaxed and balanced life, allowing us to move away from being trapped in old habits that no longer serve us very well. 

Being prepared for retirement also means learning how to be comfortable and relaxed with where we are, with how we look, with where we live, with who our partner is and importantly, understanding that money alone just won’t cut it. There may yet be a little more work required before the magic date arrives, but that’s ok, there’s plenty of time to develop your Plan B.