Is Your Retirement Fulfilling or Just Busy?

If you ask many retirees how they like retirement, you nearly always get the response, “I don’t know when I had time to work!”  Their days are filled with shopping, errands, and appointments; get-togethers with friends are regularly calendared.  They have time to do everything they wanted to do when they were working but never had time for and can be  completely selfish with their time.  But does that really bring happiness?   

    

After a couple of years of retirement and going through the honeymoon period of taking full control of how you spend your day, you may ask yourself if you are happy just being busy.  You may have settled into a routine that you consider fun - lunch dates with friends, morning workouts, matinees; you may have taken on some fun projects like redecorating the house or taking trips here or there several times a year (just because you can) - all fun, or at least pleasant, but you may feel dissatisfied.  Can’t imagine feeling dissatisfied in retirement?  If you were lucky enough to find fulfillment in your career, you most likely strive to find fulfillment in retirement as well, and simple pleasures may not be cutting it.    

After the daily jubilee of “Yay!  I’m retired!  I don't have to go to work today!” wears off, it’s common to feel some type of loss - could be loss of social interaction, lack of purpose, or a feeling of disconnection - so we fill up our time with being busy.  We fill up our new free time with pleasures.  Although important, pleasures don’t always fulfill our need for a purpose.  Thinking back on your life when you worked, you were respected, valued, needed.  Your feedback and advice meant something.  You were part of something larger than yourself.  If you found your career fulfilling, you were probably pretty important.  So why do you need to have a fulfilling and purposeful retirement after years of working in a fulfilling and purposeful career?  What's wrong with just doing nothing in retirement?

Part of what kept you going in your career was your purpose - whether it be the love of your work or a need for the money.  Without purpose, you'll end up drifting along, losing motivation.  Instead of running the day, the day will run you.  The difference between pleasure and fulfillment is that pleasure comes from external sources - sitting by the lake with a warm cappuccino, walking on a sunny beach in the middle of January. Fulfillment comes from within.  Fulfillment comes from things like sharing your legacy, benefiting the social good, or continually improving your physical and mental fitness.  It might come from exploring your passion or learning a new skill. 

Retirement seems like the perfect time in your life to find that purposeful life.  What skills and traits do you possess that can be used to leave people, places and things better than how you found them?  What events and relationships are worthy of your time?  I used to shape the minds of children and help other teachers hone their craft in my previous career as a teacher.  Now, when I spend time with my grandsons, I help them discover the world by taking them on "field trips" or reading to them.  The adventure trips that I plan each year for our girls getaway inspires all of us to step outside our comfort zones and push ourselves mentally and physically.  Enrolling in a photography class to sharpen my skills has helped me preserve important events in the lives of my family and friends.  My routine of a daily dose of vitamin D through hiking, biking, and gardening sets a positive tone for my day.  After two years of the "no plan plan," I'm finding my purpose in retirement.   

Don’t be afraid to leave your profession, explore your passion, and take a risk at trying something new.  A healthy mixture of pleasure and fulfillment seems perfect.