Finding a sense of purpose in retirement.
The world puts out a very clear message about retirement. Retirement should be your ultimate happy place. So people are very surprised when I tell them that for some people, retirement can be a significant source of distress.
In fact, a surprisingly large number of retirees find that they are less happy after retirement than before. They are not unhappy with retirement itself. They love the extra time and freedom from the daily grind. What they are unhappy about is how they feel about themselves after they retire.
What’s wrong with me? I should be happier.
A year or two after retiring, some people find that they’re having a tough time adjusting to their new life. They can feel very surprised and confused that they don’t feel happier.
This confusion is compounded by all the images they see of retired people. Every commercial shows happy, laughing, seniors talking about the joy of their “golden years”. The difference between how they actually feel about retirement, and how they think they’re supposed to feel, can create a lot of internal tension.
They feel as if they’re not doing retirement “right”. And they wonder what is wrong with them. They blame themselves, and the way they talk about themselves sounds very shaming.
“Why does my life feel so empty? I have friends, family, activities; but it feels like something is missing. I’m so ungrateful.”
“I’m so lucky, I have so much. I have to get off the pity pot.”
“What’s my problem?”
What people don’t say about retirement.
When we think of retirement, we imagine all the wonderful benefits that we’ll get; free time, relaxation, travel, etc. But with all the focus on what you can gain from retirement, very little time is spent talking about what you may lose when you retire.
Love it or hate it, for many of us work is at the core of our identity. When we meet someone, we tell them our profession “I’m a teacher, a nurse or a cop”, before we talk about whether we’re married, have kids, where we live, or what we do for fun.
Beyond giving us an income, our profession is a big part of who we are. It provides us a:
Place to go
Something to do
Sense of identity and community
Connection to others
Structure to our day
Place in the world
Sense of purpose and achievement
While retirement frees us from the parts of work we hate, retirement also robs us of the parts of work that love.
While working, you may not realize the importance of the intangible benefits you get from your work. You may not understand that they are a part of what gives your lives a sense of meaning. And when you take away a person’s sense of meaning, they can feel lost, untethered, and without purpose.
Unfortunately, for many people, this doesn’t become clear until after they stop working. They are shocked to find themselves feeling adrift.
Get a hobby?
The standard response to anyone brave enough to admit to not being 100% happy in retirement is “Get Busy” or “Get a hobby”. Golfing, knitting, painting, fishing, traveling, gardening . . . the list goes on and on.
For many people, hobbies give them a deep sense of meaning, satisfaction, purpose, and structure. These people generally find adjusting to retirement fairly easy. But for others, hobbies are simply an enjoyable way to spend some time. They like golf, but they don’t find meaning or purpose in golf. For these people, the adjustment to retirement can be a struggle.
Finding a sense of meaning. How does that work?
As human beings, we have an innate drive to create meaning in our lives. People have been thinking about life and its meaning since time began. Over 2,000 years ago, Socrates said, “An unexamined life is not worth living”.
I’m not saying that work provides our entire sense of meaning. There is so much more to life than work. There are our friends, our family, the things that give us joy, the commitments we make and keep, and much more. I’m just saying that for most of us, work is a part of that constellation of meaning. And when we stop working, we may experience a deep loss.
And suddenly feeling grief at not working, can really catch people by surprise.
Therapy for retirement?
When people start to realize that they need more than a hobby to replace the meaning lost in retirement, they generally start by looking outward. They throw themselves into activities. They fill their calendars with stuff to do. And while that may keep these thoughts at bay, it rarely solves the real problem. And they soon find that activity without meaning is just white noise.
When this issue comes up in therapy, I encourage my clients to turn inward rather than outward in their search. To find what connects them to their core being. To better understand who they are and who they want to be. That’s where therapy comes in.
Therapy can be a process of self-discovery in which we strip away the parts that society, family, and economics have imposed on you. And find what it is that you believe, what’s at the core of your sense of self. Who you are as a person. There’s so much stuff we’ve built up over the years about who we should be, who others want us to be, who we’re afraid to be. Finding that core self can take more effort than you’d think.
Once we find who we are, then opportunities to connect to that sense of meaning start to show up all over the place. Here’s a quote from Rasheed Ogunlaru, that I think really expresses this idea well.
Finding oneself and one's path is like waking up on a foggy day. Be patient, and presently the fog will clear, and that which has always been there can be seen. The path is already there to follow”
The goal of post-retirement therapy is to help you find yourself, so that your path can become clear.