Let’s say you’re out for a bike ride on a beautiful clear sunny day.
The temperature is perfect, the roads are open and clear, the sun is bright overhead and the scenery is filled with green rolling hills and colorful landscapes.
If you’re a serious biker, you might be turning this outing into a challenging cardio workout, as you speed your way forward. You approach a rise and stand up in the saddle and power your way up and fly down. What could be better than this?
When you’re about three miles from your destination, you see a winding stretch of clear pavement downhill; you expect a spectacular end for your ride.
Suddenly, an unexpected storm sweeps in over the mountain, the sky blackens and you are slammed by wind and rain. Your visibility is now measured in yards instead of miles. There is no place to shelter. You have no choice but to go on.
You cut your speed to a manageable level, adjust for the wind and push on. But with care and awareness of the changes in conditions and the dangers ahead.
We have been pedaling through “normal” times until this pandemic. Sure, there have been challenges, failures, lessons learned. But you’ve never been faced with a global pandemic.
To navigate this part of your chapter, you might need to change your perspective, expectation and methods. The transition from work life to retirement provides not only challenges but opportunities to grow and experience.
Facing this challenge, which could be life or death, requires your flexibility and willingness to accept what is…now.
I look forward to that wide open, down hill run on a bright sunny day. But for right now, we need to adjust to our current reality and do so, purposefully and with care.
