What is a successful retirement?
It’s a bit more tangible to think of success during your work life but in retirement? During our work life, we can chart our progress by our wealth, our title or some other metric that makes sense to us.
In retirement, when the earnings end and the job title is no longer there, defining success needs another way of thinking.
Here are a few thoughts you might consider:
- Health: This is something you can chart. You can understand how your actions are tied to your health and how attentive you are to keeping yourself as fit as possible.
- Activities: You can also get a handle on meaningful activities. For example, activities that light you up, whether it’s golf, pickleball or cycling or volunteering, mentoring or even working a part-time gig.
- Family and social interactions: What does success mean to you in these areas? Do you have a network of friends who are important to you? Do you devote time with people you love?
- You might also include areas such as financial stewardship. In other words, are you watching your resources and living within a safe spending corridor?
- Your feeling of success might also be tied to learning, travel or other hobbies or activities.
The challenge is to understand the components of your life and how they relate to your feelings of success.
If you want to try an interesting exercise, let me know and I’ll send you a Wheel of Life in Retirement for you to begin the process of defining success in this chapter.
