At first, retirement feels like freedom. No alarm clocks, no deadlines, no office politics.
But after the honeymoon phase wears off, many retirees are surprised to find themselves asking—“Now what?”
The good news is that there is a path from lack of meaning to a retirement that gives you purpose and a feeling of fulfillment.
Dr. Riley Moynes describes the four phases of retirement in his book The Four Phases of Retirement: What to Expect When You’re Retiring and his TED Talk video.
The key to regaining a sense of purpose and meaning in retirement is to understand the process that most retirees go through in their retirement transition, and to take the steps necessary to reinvent yourself and find purpose.
Are you ready to begin?
Retirement’s First Phase: Pure Vacation
In the first phase you feel like you’re on an extended vacation.
You enjoy getting up whenever you choose and do whatever you want whenever you want.
It’s like being on permanent vacation and can be wonderful.
At least for a while.
Until it starts feeling boring and you wonder if your life is over
The Crisis of Lost Purpose
Typically after about a year, the feeling of freedom gives way to the second stage of retirement, when you feel loss and lost.
This is the stage when the calendar feels empty, you’ve lost your purpose in life, your social connections, your status, your identity, and your respect.
You start to wonder if there is any meaning in your life and if you’re just killing time watching TV before you die.
Unfortunately, many retirees wind up stuck in the second stage. They feel helpless and depressed. To fill up the time, they go on back-to-back cruises or trips.
The way out of being stuck isn’t distracting yourself with busyness. It’s reinvention.
How Exploration Leads to Reinvention
The first step to finding purpose in retirement is exploration.
You follow your curiosity and try some new activities.
When you find those things that work for you, you reinvent yourself and regain your sense of meaning and purpose.
Experiment Your Way to Meaning
During the exploration phase, you try out different options, including things that may interest you or have been of interest in the past.
As you try things on for size, don’t make any significant commitments. Remember that you’re just testing and trying things out to see how they fit. Don’t block yourself in. See my post, How One Wrong Yes in Retirement Taught Me a Bigger Lesson.
Tiny Experiments Light the Way
Try some “Tiny Experiments.” Decide what you’d like to try out, and make a simple pact with yourself: “For X days I will do Y.”
When you reach the end of your experiment, you evaluate. Do you want to continue doing this, modify it, or stop?
You can’t fail when you do tiny experiments. If you try something and decide it’s not for you, that’s a win because now you know it’s a dead end. If you try something and it works out, that’s a win because you’ve found something that can give you a new sense of meaning and purpose.
(For more details about Tiny Experiments, see Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s excellent book, Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.) Watch Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s short video, How to Design a Tiny Experiment • Video Walkthrough.
Make a Curious List—and Begin
Retirement doesn’t hand you a new purpose—you have to create it.
Start by following one small spark of curiosity.
Make a curious list. Forget practical; forget productive. Make a list of things you’re curious about.
What has interested you in the past? What interests you now? What have you wondered about and would like to know more? Write it down on your curious list.
Pick one thing.
Make a pact with yourself and start your experiment.
AI Note: I wrote this blog post myself, using my own words and thoughts for the initial draft. I used AI only to suggest headlines, section headings, and text improvements.
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