When you retire your
attitude toward your future is important. You can believe that retirement is
about, creating a new self-awareness and self identification, gaining new
friends, living on a smaller income, finding new social supports, creating a
new role for yourself, finding things to do to fill the time, and developing
new skills.
Or you can
believe that retirement is adjusting to a lower income, losing friends and
other social support, finding out you are no longer an important person,
filling time until you die, and feeling blue because you are not using your old
skills.
Retirement is not
about being taken care of or being put into care.
According to the
school of Mental Health in Ontario exploring self-awareness and sense of
identity is a chance for courageous and supportive conversations about
strengths, difficulties, preferences, values, lived experiences, ambitions.
To do this you
need a safe environment where you can learn, affirm cultural heritages and
practise advocating for yourself. Having a sense of who you are, in the context
of culture and community, may help you see how you matter and can contribute to
the world.
Retirement is a
formal departure from paid work that occurs on a given day, a status with new rules
to learn and a process that begins the day an employee acknowledges that their
worker role will end. For example, there may be losses of social and
recreational activities with other workers, a shared history with other
workers, pride in and respect expressed for a worker’s competence, the
stimulation and challenge of the job, and perks that were part of the job.
For many of us,
the job has defined us for all of our working years, Our lifestyle is tied to
our work, because work/career occupies so much of our existence. Our career/work
defines our Involvement with family, friends, recreations, hobbies, etc. However,
the social interaction of the workplace is also part of our social life. These important
aspects of the workplace can be missed following retirement.
In retirement the roles and behaviour patterns will or should be abandoned or modified, many face the difficult task of finding new sources of identity to replace those lost. A small but growing part of planning for retirement is to develop a diversified portfolio of “self” so that despite losing your work self to retirement, other selves will be available to fill the gap. Some of these alternate selves (e.g., family roles, club involvements) will continue into retirement and will grow.
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