Are you missing retirement?
When you love what you do, your career doesn’t seem like work most of the time. You probably can’t imagine yourself not working. But, are you missing some of the benefits of “retirement?” One of my clients really struggled with that question.
Bert was a highly successful entrepreneur. He had been delaying “retiring” for several years. He loved what he did and just couldn’t imagine not working. His work was demanding and highly dependent upon him being responsive to the schedule of his clients. As a result, a large part of his time was devoted to his work.
He began to realize that he was missing more and more opportunities to do things with his wife and friends now that most of them were retired. He feared that he would miss the fun parts of retirement all together and he didn’t want to do that. He didn’t need the money and that was not what was motivating him to work. But he just didn’t know how to satisfy his conflicting needs.
After we identified what it was about working that Bert really enjoyed, we worked on identifying ways that he could replace that need outside of his business. In addition, Bert began to realize that there was a way that he could stay involved with his business but with a much smaller time commitment. That would allow him to increase the amount of time he spent with his wife and friends and still allow him to begin introducing the “non-work” solution to replacing what he loved about his work.
Like many people today, work will remain part of Bert’s Happiness PortfolioTM for a while. But, now several of the other areas of his life are receiving a much larger percent of his time and attention. Bert is a much happier guy now – and so is his wife!