USA TODAY: …To prepare yourself mentally for retirement, [Nancy Schlossberg, a professor of counseling psychology ] recommends taking a hard look at three areas of your life:
• Your identity. It’s who you are to yourself and the world. You can think of it as what you put on your business card or your tagline under your e-mail signature, she says. “When I was a professor at the University of Maryland, it was very easy to say that, and people got a picture of who I was. If you are a roofer, painter, artist, teacher — that’s part of your identity. One man who retired as CEO of a Fortune 100 company had plenty of money for his golden years, but he said his retirement felt ‘hollow’ because he hadn’t thought about his new identity.”…
• Your purpose/mission. This is related to your identity. It’s what gets you going in the morning. It’s your passion. It can take some time to sort out, and you may have several different missions or purposes during your golden years, Schlossberg says. You can ask yourself what you wish you had done in your life and turn that into a new focus. “One woman said to me, ‘I help organizations develop mission statements, but I don’t have a mission statement myself.’ ”
• Your relationships. When you leave your work life, you often lose touch with people who were once a part of your everyday life, so you need to develop new relationships, new communities. You might do that by engaging in volunteer activities, going to a health club or even hanging out at Starbucks, Schlossberg says… (more)
