How to Redefine Your Identity Post-Retirement: Are You Ready?

How many times in the last week have you heard commercials about retirement? Or seen an advertisement pop up on your cell phone, Facebook page, or LinkedIn account?

Retirement advertisements are everywhere! And the typical question always asked is, “How financially prepared are you?” The purpose is to help you become financially prepared for your retirement years. They are all about money.

Yet there is another side to retirement that few people are ready for. We are so focused on the financial aspects of retirement that we are blind-sided when someone asks about the personal side of retirement.

Re-thinking an outdated question

Our lives are so crammed with earning, saving, investing, all wrapped up in a package called retirement planning, that we have no room to think about anything else. What we’re left with is a void when asked, “What do you do?” once retired.

My friends, Leslie Inman and Roxanne Jones, are addressing that question and related topics in the book they are now writing, Retirement Voices; Women reveal what life after work is really like. Together they researched nearly 300 women from the United States and 10 other countries who had already left the working world. Their goal: to explore the human impact of retirement, their sense of purpose, relationships, health, and everyday life. The most common challenge for women (and men) is how to redefine their identity. After thirty or more years in the workplace, their identities are suddenly dismantled, leaving many of the survey participants unable to answer that seemingly simple question.

How does identity and emotion guide our answers?

Throughout most of our adult lives, when meeting someone new, the typical opening question (primarily for Americans) tends to be, “what do you do?” And the typical, testing-the-waters answer is to reply, “I’m a middle-school teacher”, or “I’m a civil engineer”, or a similar answer based upon our professions. Once we’re retired and that question is asked, post-retirement replies tend to fall into three categories:

1. “I’m a retired nurse”, etc., offering their past job title. Having not given thought to the question, retirees answer who they were in the past, overlooking the greatness of who they are now.

2. “Well, I take my niece to school, volunteer, walk the dog, and enjoy a good book in the evenings.” Newly retired women may recite a list of activities, which give the appearance of busy-ness and contributing to something. However, this answer also falls short of who they truly are.

3. “Whatever I want, whenever I want.” Several survey participants would defensively bounce back with this answer, almost daring anyone to contradict or insult them. As with the previous answers, this one isn’t revealing or inviting.

Of the 300 respondents, the answers were split evenly, however many did mention their previous work experience at one point during the survey.

These answers are revealing for several reasons.

• Many times we don’t know what we are going to do in retirement until we are in the post-work life for a while.
• Additionally, retirement is not what it used to be. We are living longer, healthier lives, yet retirees and pre-retirees are still fighting the stigma that retirement means we are old, decrepit, and unable to contribute meaningfully to society.
• We feel we must explain or make excuses for what we are doing or not doing. Therefore, how we define ourselves takes on a combination of defensiveness and caution.

As a result, we are not serving ourselves positively with these answers. They lack the joy one should feel in this phase of life, and the opportunity to position themselves to live a valid, full life.

Who will you be post-retirement?

Has this question got you thinking? If you are not yet retired, then use this opportunity to explore your future identity and how you would like to define it in 5, 10, or 15 years from now. If you are living the post-work life now, not to worry! The exercise to redefine yourself is the same.

1. Give yourself time: think about this question. Rather than ask yourself, “what do you do?” a far better questions to ask yourself is “who are you?” or “what are your interests?”

2. Explore opportunities, hobbies, and ideas from the past. Is there something you kept putting off that you would like to explore now? Dancing? Pottery? Entrepreneurship? Learning a new language? Certification in karate? Now is your time to explore and rediscover!

3. Revise your elevator speech. As you explore the opportunities now available to you, create a new elevator speech that redefines who you are, what your interests are, and how you are fulfilling these now that you are able to do so. Perhaps, “I’m an explorer and plan to hike the major trails in all 62 national parks.” (My goal!) or “I split my time between gardening and glass blowing.” (My father’s post-retirement life).

The best news of all: there is no wrong answer. Retirement in the 21^st century is nothing like what our parents or grandparents experienced. We want more out of life. We are productive. We have half a century of strengths, talents, and abilities that are bursting to be explored and a decade or more ahead of us in which to do it. This is our time to make this phase what we want it to be.

Just as with marriage, for example, retirement is not a singular event; it is a process that takes time to develop. Take time to relax, think, sleep, reconnect with yourself then ask yourself, “What’s next?”

Get yourself ready for ME time! We’ve met others’ expectations for the first half of our lives; now it is time for you and it is okay to focus on yourself!

How will you spend your well-deserved time?

Kristen

image credit: skeeze from Pixabay