The third stage of the Retire With IMPACT Model is PATTERNS. This stage is all about identifying what you're doing repeatedly, how you're thinking, behaving, feeling, relating, and asking one crucial question: Is it working? Whether you’re planning for retirement, transitioning into it, or already in it, the patterns you’re running will determine whether you thrive or simply survive. Some patterns will be helpful. Others won’t. And some might be so familiar that you don’t even notice them anymore, which is fine if they’re helpful, of course, but not if they aren’t.

Retirement brings change. But your patterns don’t always keep up.

One of the most common things I hear from clients is this: “I thought I’d be fine in retirement. I didn’t expect it to feel like this.” Often, what’s changed is their context (they’ve retired). What hasn’t changed is their patterns. They’re still running pre-retirement patterns, such as mindsets, routines, and beliefs, that no longer fit. Retirement demands a new approach. And the PATTERNS stage, as well as the overall IMPACT Model, helps you find it.

The Cliff Edge: A Story of Repeated Struggle and eventual insight

In my book, Retire With IMPACT, I tell the story of the Cliff Edge. It’s a metaphor many people connect with. You keep returning to the same old spot. You know what happens there. And yet, over you go again. Until one day, something shifts. You see the Cliff Edge before you reach it and, in a moment of self-awareness, step back. Breathing a sigh of relief at avoiding yet another bruising landing at the base of the Cliff, you turn around and spot a more attractive destination, which you call your ‘Over There’ place. You map a path to your Over There place, which is where you’re doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t, and head towards it, feeling more positive with each step you take. That’s what the PATTERNS stage is about: stepping back from your Cliff Edges, noticing the unhelpful loops undermining your retirement, and beginning to build a path to somewhere better.

Patterns aren’t fixed. They’re formed and can be reformed.

One of the most empowering ideas about patterns is that they’re not like a painting on the wall that stays the same no matter how often and how long you look at it. Instead, they’re like pieces of clay on a potter’s wheel waiting to be shaped and reshaped into something you like the look of. I think this idea is powerful and liberating.

Patterns form for all sorts of reasons, your upbringing, education, work history, and relationships. Some have served you well, but need updating. Others were protective once, but are now limiting. Either way, they’re not permanent.

What counts as a pattern?

Anything that shows up regularly in your life. Some examples include:

  • Attention: Who or what gets your focus?
  • Thinking: What stories do you tell yourself?
  • Beliefs: What do you think is or isn’t possible for you?
  • Behaviours: What do you do on autopilot?
  • Emotions: What moods are you most familiar with?
  • Relating: How do you connect or disconnect from others?

Central to the PATTERNS stage is the idea that unhelpful patterns often form for ‘positive’ reasons in that they benefited you at the time. For example, overeating to cope with loneliness, people-pleasing to avoid conflict, and overplanning to create a sense of control. They worked until they didn’t.

Your Emotional Self knows when your patterns aren’t working.

By the time you reach the PATTERNS stage, you’ve already met your Emotional Self, the part of you that sends emotional messages about how well or otherwise you’re doing at thriving and surviving in retirement.

Persistent stress, self-doubt, low energy, or anxiety? These are your Emotional Self’s way of saying: “Something isn’t working,” and it’s usually a pattern problem. Conversely, when your Emotional Self sends feelings of ease, satisfaction, connection, or hope, that’s a sign that you’re spending more time happily in your Over There place.

The Cliff Edge activity helps you get specific.

It’s one thing to say, “I’ve got some bad habits,” but another to name, understand and start changing them. That’s what the Cliff Edge activity does. It helps you map out:

  • What you’re doing that isn’t working (your Cliff Edges)
  • What you’re doing that is working (your Over There)
  • Whether these patterns are caused, chosen, or just happening to you
  • And whether they’re tied to the past, present, or future

This kind of insight is powerful. Once you see your patterns clearly, they become pieces of clay you can start shaping differently.

Pattern interruption is where real change begins.

Once you’ve named your patterns, the next step is changing them. That means interrupting the unhelpful ones and building new, helpful ones in their place.

You do this through deliberate tweaks in:

  • Time (how often, when, or for how long you do something)
  • Space (where it happens or who’s involved)
  • Sequence (what order things happen in)
  • Meaning (what it represents to you)

The goal is to make your helpful patterns more emotionally compelling than your unhelpful ones, so your mind-body systems start to ‘lock on’ to them.

This is where patterns shift and where momentum begins.

When someone goes from stuck to consistent progress in retirement, it’s usually because they’ve done the PATTERNS work. They’ve understood what’s been holding them back and replaced it with something better.

They’ve found their Over There place. And they’re living in it.