WHAT WILL GIVE YOUR RETIREMENT LIFE MEANING AND PURPOSE?

ARLENE'S MUSINGS


WHAT WILL GIVE YOUR RETIREMENT LIFE MEANING AND PURPOSE?


It is Monday morning 8:00 a.m. EST in North Carolina and my husband Ed and I just returned from Top Sail Beach where we walk a mile every Monday morning from May through August as part of the Turtle Watch Volunteer Program. Our mission is to look for giant turtle tracks in the sand, evidence that a female turtle has come ashore in the night, sometimes crawling 30 - 40 inches, to prepare a nest and then lay approximately 80 -100 precious eggs. These nests have to be identified immediately and protected carefully from predators, as once the hatchlings surface (60 - 90 days later) very few actually make it back to the ocean. Of those that do return to the ocean only 1 in 1,000 survive to maturity. 


This weekly activity fills me with a sense of MEANING AND PURPOSE. It is an opportunity to make a contribution, have fun and get some exercise at the same time. I participate in other volunteer  activities that also fills my need for MEANING AND PURPOSE in my retirement life. I tutor at the Middle School and visit with a stroke victim on a weekly basis (through my participation in the Retired Seniors Volunteer Program, RSVP in my area).


Reflecting on my current life, I realized that I am living a multi-dimensional retirement life, as a retiree and as an encore careerist (doing retirement coaching and facilitating workshops). Both avenues provide me with the MEANING AND PURPOSE that I might have lost if I hadn't personally discovered how critically important this is to my sense of self  and happiness.  Of course, I knew the importance of finding meaning and purpose on an intellectual level, read about it in the research and stress it in all my retirement seminars ( "HOW TO LIVE YOUR BEST RETIREMENT LIFE" and "THE NEW RETIREMENT: Focusing On The Non-Financial Aspects Of Retirement"). However, I am truly experiencing it in "real-time" now.  Each of us has to remember that one of the keys to living a "Successful" Retirement Life is to discover what will give us MEANING AND PURPOSE and a sense of fulfillment and happiness.


In YOUR PERSONAL SURVIVAL TOOLKIT section of out book and in the workshops we emphasize the importance of redefining "SUCCESS" in your retirement life and using THE THREE QUESTIONS OF RETIREMENT LIFE and THE WHEEL OF RETIREMENT LIFE exercises to help you create your own definition.


Here are some additional questions for you to ponder. Please share your thoughts and stories with us on the blog.


WHAT WILL GIVE YOUR RETIREMENT LIFE MEANING AND PURPOSE?
HOW WILL YOU DEFINE "SUCCESS" IN RETIREMENT?