The second stage of the Retire With IMPACT Model is MEANING, and many people find themselves stuck in varying degrees of mystery here. They feel stressed, lost, or disappointed, but can’t put their finger on why. Or they feel fine but know something’s missing and can’t explain what. This is where the MEANING stage makes all the difference because making progress depends on making sense.

Retirement doesn’t just happen to you. It happens through you.

At the heart of the MEANING stage is the idea that you can’t change what you don’t understand. And retirement, perhaps more than any other life stage, requires you to make sense of what’s really going on beneath the surface.

The MEANING stage helps you explore the psychological and practical causes behind how you feel and where you’re at. It prevents you from ending up in what I call the ‘dead end’ of symptoms and effects, such as overthinking or stress, and gets you focused on addressing root causes with effective, targeted responses.

Emotions as messages

A core idea of the MEANING stage is to view all emotions as messages sent by what I call your Emotional Self. This is the part of you that sends emotional messages, not to sabotage you, but to alert you to what’s helping or harming your ability to thrive and survive as you plan for or live in retirement.

It follows that stress, anxiety, low mood, and confusion aren’t random. They’re helpful messages, albeit delivered in unhelpful ways, asking you to take notice. The MEANING stage helps you decode them. Using tools like The Meaning Map, you start to see:

  • What areas of your life are working
  • What areas are not
  • And what kind of responses might actually work

Without meaning, you get stuck in cycles of confusion and self-doubt. With meaning, you get off this unenjoyable emotional mystery tour and find clarity and direction.

Many people entering or living in retirement focus on what to do next. The MEANING stage helps them explore the why. Why is retirement feeling harder than expected? Why is it difficult to relax, find purpose, or feel like yourself?

Answering these questions brings coherence. Coherence leads to understanding. And understanding makes change possible.

Your Emotional Self is trying to help you. Are you listening?

It is crucial to understand that your Emotional Self is always trying to be helpful, even if how they go about this doesn’t feel very helpful. Ignoring your Emotional Self doesn’t make them go away with an indifferent shrug of the shoulders. Instead, it makes them ‘knock louder’ to get their message of concern that your retirement is threatened through to you. That’s why people who ignore their emotions often end up burnt out, withdrawn, or anxious and have no idea how they got there.

However, when you start seeing your emotions as helpful messages, even if they are delivered in unhelpful ways, everything changes. You begin to understand where your energy is leaking, where your unmet needs are hiding and where your focus needs to be.

The past, present, and future all matter, but not equally all the time.

Another key idea in the MEANING stage is learning how your past, present, and future interact. Are you stuck in old roles, past disappointments, or unresolved losses? Are you overwhelmed by the present, or fearful of the future?

The Meaning Map helps you plot these influences and locate where your story has become confused, unfinished, or stuck. That’s how you begin to write a more coherent narrative, one that empowers rather than limits you.

Meaning is not abstract. It’s diagnostic.

This stage isn’t an exercise in philosophising but working out why your retirement experience is unfolding the way it is and how to change that. Think of it as a retirement diagnosis tool. If something feels off, your Emotional Self will tell you why. They will help you:

  • Identify your priorities
  • Understand your emotions
  • Make better decisions based on what’s real, not what’s guessed at
  • Build a retirement that is yours, not imposed

To make progress in retirement, you must make sense of your reality.

The core message of the MEANING stage is this: understanding why things are as they are so that you can change them. If you're stuck, confused, or just unsure where to go next, this stage will help you find your footing.

And you’re in a good place, the MEANING stage will help you stay there by helping you understand what’s working and why.