This pandemic is still grinding away. It’s so annoying that many of us are starting to rethink where we should be focusing our attention. Surveying the landscape of our lives more closely so as to discover what’s important and where you really need to be. It could be that our retirement strategies are in need of a tune-up. The many ways in which we have been shaken up by recent events are running deeply through our communities. From divided friendships, the onset of depression, employment worries, the emergence of fake news and a confusing array of investment advice are all part of the mix. Under pressure from our governments and employers over the past 18mths, we’ve been asked to step up and shoulder a big load so it’s easy to ask: ‘why me’. This crazy pandemic is pushing many of us out of our comfy boxes and forcing people to deal with their emotions and dreams in a whole new way. Perhaps we can agree that there’s been a lot of messy stuff going down, and it would appear that the shock waves haven’t yet finished .

A safe mooring is needed. Understanding how to develop and nurture our own well-being into retirement is a theme running throughout this blog. Understanding just how achievable it is to find a calm, safe harbour amongst the chaos is a real concern. The world seems a little less friendly, the opportunities more limiting, the challenges bigger and affordability slipping away for lots of people, but whatever we’re facing, and at every turn in the road, we are still at the centre of our own world and in that respect, nothing has really changed.

If you’re like me, you no doubt hanker for a quieter life, perhaps remembering a time gone by where everything seemed so much simpler and more straightforward, where, in setting your course things were manageable, achievable, and measurable over time. Increasingly these outcomes suit a privileged few, those that already have more than they’d like to admit. The gap widens and with that, some left of field strategies could be required for some of us if we truly wish to be comfortably settled in the place of our choosing.

“It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.” – J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

My images of retirement had always reflected this dream of being able to do anything that’s possible or, simply the freedom of choice to do nothing at all. Confusion has invaded those dreams lately. We’re now living in a world where the truth has become elusive. Facebook recently declared to my utter disbelief: “We don’t have a policy that stipulates that the information you post on Facebook must be true. So the message of social media is they want you to make your own informed choices about what you believe, but this inevitably makes finding the truth a very messy process for the average person. If there is no requirement for people posting the truth on these new social media platforms then you can say just about anything you want – no questions asked. To think this can be shared globally and have it believed by millions of people is staggering. No wonder I’m confused.

The choices we make daily are so important because they go on to map out our future, things then begin to unfold accordingly, our very own personalised life design is being created every day. So what design might that be? At the most fundamental level are our feelings, we design our strategies around getting what we want (or think we want) and put much energy into avoiding the things we don’t want around. So, based on our individual likes and dislikes, we then live certain lifestyles believing that what we have created is going to be permanent, when in fact, it will only ever be impermanent. Disappointment follows closely behind. Everything in life has a cause, therefore, managing our own mind is a skill worth acquiring in our latter years, especially when the truth can be seen as either fashionable or unfashionable depending on what site you’re on. What’s your truth – have you ended up with  a design you’re comfortable with?

Truth is defintiely not something you feel and in an era of unverifiable news, each of us needs to become the guardians of our inner well-being, standing alert, watching carefully the information that we allow to enter through the doors to our inner world, into our precious thoughts. If anyone can present themselves as experts on anything and/or everything no matter what their qualifications, then we have a big problem. Truth itself is at stake. It’s no wonder that depression and mental health are on the rise, for these are bad habits that are designed to confuse and divide.

The truth is we have an interconnectedness to each other and to the natural world that once understood, gives us deep insight into what is needed to heal our world and ourselves. Truth can never be authorised or popular –  if we tend to only seek out random statements on social media that support our own predetermined position, we must therefore begin to shut out other possibilities that could open our eyes to ways in which we can care and support each other. It’s easy to get angry with the world and even easier to do things that we can later regret, it’s certainly been proven that it’s bad for our health and well-being. Disinformation, wherever you hear it, is a threat to your inner peace, your retirement dreams and the peace of our entire world.

Not everyone that seeks to retire or has the inclination to reshape their lives will identify with these ideas, these are just words from outside the box. Our peers and the retirement models presented to us only ever discuss the old paradigm: money, how to attain a comfortable lifestyle and the many tips on how to pass your time without getting bored. But, if mindfulness was developed in retirement then at some point you may come to recognise there exists an inner critic that gets in the way of our own happiness. If we choose to meet this inner judgmental voice with a healthy dose of courage and good detective skills we can begin to keep these afflictive emotions at bay.

It’s easy to keep your focus on the things around you as the main problem and, reaching retirement has always been a challenge even in the most favourable of circumstances but, even with the added conditions of Covid-19 we can still manage to achieve a balanced life if our minds are free of unnecessary distractions that we alone, allow through the door of our own thinking, our wrong perception does us enormous damage. In the end, we don’t have mastery over our feelings and mistakenly think that by changing the stuff around us and by rearranging the furniture we can magically transform our circumstances without any further effort. Adjustments are necessary for our sanity, but we’re looking in the wrong places. There is a simple solution, knowing that we don’t have the power to always create the feelings we want is key.  We’re better off just sitting back and enjoying the show, learning to watch as the feelings come and go, just like the four seasons seem to manage fine without our involvement, just like the summer breeze moving through…..