Retirement is profoundly transitional. It’s a major life event and can be complex, confusing and unsettling. It’s equivalent in life disruption to the teenage journey to adulthood, except on that journey, we typically go to college for four years and graduate as a cohort. With retirement, we often retire alone, without rituals, enablers or a peer group with whom to navigate the transition together.
According to AgeWave research, the initial couple of years in retirement is a period of liberation and disorientation, a double-edged sword. It’s a time for getting used to retirement and figuring out what it really means. In addition to a sense of liberation, many new retirees also feel disoriented, uncertain, and anxious about what the future holds, how well they’ll adjust to being retired, how they’ll spend their time without the routine of work lending structure and purpose to their lives, and how they’re going to afford the potential decades of life in front of them. More than a third say it’s harder to structure their time than it was before they retired, and nearly half say they feel guilty about not using their leisure “productively.” [from What Retirees Want: A Holistic View of Life’s Third Age, by Ken Dychtwald, PhD and Robert Morrison]
According to recent research from the Retirement Coaches Association, 43% of retirees say retirement was harder than expected and almost half indicate that adjusting to retirement took longer than expected. 91% say that having specific goals for everyday life would have been helpful. And 83% saw some decrease in their social interactions.
Why We Need a Rejuvenation Year
Many of us come off the work conveyer belt tired with depleted vitality, having spent 40+ years juggling work & family responsibilities. Retirement creates a hole in and impacts almost every aspect of our daily lives, including what roles we play, where we spend our time, how we spend our time, who we are with. Yet most planning and guidance is financially focused.
We don’t always know what we want. We don’t always know what we want to do or be in a post career world. Yet, we need to be able to tell the story of what we are going to do and aspire to be, but we don’t always have a good narrative for our future selves.
There isn’t a good roadmap. It’s challenging to develop a holistic approach to retirement.
What is a Rejuvenation Year?
It’s like a gap year for retirees, yet more. A Rejuvenation Year is a new ritual for the retirement transition period, which typically lasts 12-24 months. This new ritual helps turn the messy middle of the retirement transition into a period of exploration and regeneration.
It’s more than a typical teen gap year, in that the focus isn’t just on travel. The key is to plan, explore and bring to life a post-retirement rejuvenation year (or two), really to “re-everything.” Recover. Relax, Recharge. Reboot health and habits. Reconnect. Rebalance. Replenish, Reinvigorate. Rethink. Re-envision. Re-invigorate. Play and have fun.
Having a rejuvenation year can also provide a strong narrative for our plans post-retirement, when we are asked “what do you do?” or “what are you going to do?”
It’s also learning to exercise a new set of muscles in your third act, where you listen to yourself – your body and your mind – determine what you need and give yourself permission to go do it.
So How Can You Make the Rejuvenation Year Real for You?
First, you do you. We have all lived different lives and have arrived at this point with different life experiences and different needs. There isn’t a one size fits all answer. Only you can determine what you want and need.
And join us for the MEA Reframing Retirement Workshop in Santa Fe this Fall: September 2 to 7, 2024, as we push the boundaries of traditional retirement, critically questioning everything about it, and help you develop a new, more personalized framework for thriving in your next phase of life.
This workshop is for you if you are thinking about or heading into retirement, recently retired, or revisiting retired life – and are curious about how to do it differently. Dive into what matters most to you right now…and explore what’s next. Design your “rejuvenation year” to kick off or reboot your retirement. It’s like a gap year for retirees, yet much more. And find your retirement cohort too!
Your new chapter starts now.
-Colleen
Colleen Drummond is a retired business innovation executive and “me, my life, my wallet” thought leader who brings human centered design to help rethink, reframe and innovate retirement so that retirees can better navigate transitions toward richer, more meaningful lives. Colleen and Robert Laura collaboratively lead Reframing Retirement workshops for MEA, in Baja, Santa Fe and online.