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Identity deserves its own section. Retirement can expose
expectations about who you believe you should be once work ends. If your
occupation, status, responsibilities or professional relationships have been
important parts of how you have understood yourself, retirement can create
particularly significant Fantasy–Reality Gaps around who you were, who you are
now and who you expect to become.
She missed the responsibility, the professional conversations and the feeling that she was good at something important. She also noticed how readily she came alive when former colleagues asked for her advice. This bothered her.
“I've been retired for two years. Surely I should have moved on by now? I shouldn't still need that part of my life.”
Caroline had assumed that successful retirement meant leaving her professional identity behind and discovering who she was without it. The longer parts of her former identity remained important to her, the more she took that as evidence she wasn't retiring properly.
Caroline's unhelpful FRG wasn't that she still valued her professional identity. It was the gap between who she believed she should be in retirement and who she actually was.
Retirement changes your relationship with work, but it does
not erase the person you were while doing it. You may have spent decades
developing qualities, skills, values, interests, knowledge and relationships
through your working life. These do not suddenly become irrelevant because you
have retired.
Equally, you don't have to carry everything forward. Some
aspects of your professional identity you may be delighted to leave behind,
others you want to retain, and some whose value only becomes apparent after you
stop working.
Reality Check: Accepting retirement does not require
rejecting your working identity. It means deciding which parts still belong in
your life and which you are ready to leave behind. Your career can remain part
of who you are without defining all of who you are.
What about you? Have you expected yourself to leave
your working identity behind when you retire?
Yes / No / Not sure
Which parts of your working identity would you like to
keep, and which are you ready to let go of?
Box for notes
If work has occupied a significant part of your adult life,
it may have answered a lot of identity questions for you. Your occupation could
tell you what you did, where you belonged, what you were responsible for, what
you were good at and even how you introduced yourself to other people.
Once that role changes or disappears, questions about
identity can become much more noticeable. You may have expected retirement to
reveal a new version of you, only to discover that you aren't entirely sure who
that person is yet.
Reality Check: You don't need an immediate answer to the
question, "Who am I now?" Developing a retirement identity can
involve discovering which parts of yourself remain important, reconnecting with
parts that received less attention during working life and developing others
through new experiences.
What about you? Have you expected yourself to know
who you are, or who you want to become, in retirement?
Yes / No / Not sure
What do you already know about your retirement identity,
and what are you still discovering?
Box for notes
You can be pleased to have retired and still miss aspects of
the person you were at work. You might miss being the expert, having
responsibility, being needed, belonging to a team, solving difficult problems,
having status or simply being known for something you did well.
Missing these things does not necessarily mean you want your
old job back. Nor does it automatically mean that you have failed to accept
retirement. Something can have been right to leave and still represent a
genuine loss.
Reality Check: Acceptance does not require you to pretend
that an important part of your life meant nothing. You can accept that your
working life has changed or ended while acknowledging what you valued about it
and what you miss. That understanding can also help you decide whether you need
to find some of what work provided elsewhere.
What about you? Have you interpreted the aspects you
miss as evidence that you aren't accepting retirement properly?
Yes / No / Not sure
What exactly do you miss, and does that tell you anything
about what you still need in your retired life?
Box for notes
The language of retirement can sometimes suggest that you
need to reinvent yourself: a new chapter, a new beginning and perhaps even a
completely new you. For some, that possibility is exciting. For others, it
creates unnecessary pressure to become someone different simply because their
working life has ended.
As you discovered through your Observing Self, you already
possess different qualities, abilities and resources that can come forward in
different circumstances. Some may have been central to your working identity;
others may have had little opportunity to emerge while work occupied so much of
your life.
Reality Check: Your retirement identity doesn't have to mean
becoming an entirely different person. It can contain continuity as well as
change. You can retain parts of yourself that continue to serve you, give
greater expression to parts that previously received less attention and develop
something new where you want to.
What about you? Have you felt any pressure to
reinvent yourself or become a different person in retirement?
Yes / No / Not sure
What might your retirement look like if, instead of
starting again, you decided what to keep, what to develop and what to leave
behind?
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