How to benefit from retirement

Retirement.

The dictionary says retirement is the action or fact of leaving one's job and ceasing to work.

What does that say to you? When I see those words it makes me think, I am finished. There is nothing left. Everything stopped.

What this tells me is that when you retire, you are giving up on yourself. You feel you are worthless. Is that why so many die when they retire, or just sit home and waste away in front of the television?

What did you want to be when you were five years old? What did you want to do when you were 18?  Were you happy with your life when you were 30?  Maybe you wanted to be a pilot, maybe a teacher. Perhaps you wanted to be a mom.  

Your dream might have been in fashion, the arts or music. If you loved numbers, possibly an accountant, maybe even a CPA.  We all had dreams and fantasies of what we wanted to be when we grew up. 

In retirement they do not have to be dreams and fantasies, they can become realities.  Let’s talk about it a minute.  Where did the dreams and fantasies come from?  Was it from what we saw, what we learned, what we read?  What gave those dreams the power?  Who told you that you couldn’t?

As a senior citizen, who supposedly is in retirement, I am living my dreams.  My fantasies are my realities.  What I loved as a child is what I am enjoying as a retiree.

I volunteer in areas that give me pleasure, that ignites my passion for living. I teach. I am constantly meeting new people. I am giving of myself so others can give of themselves. 

There are many arenas for volunteering. It is up to us to find what calls us  I don’t have to think about what I don’t want to do. Not when there is so much out there for what I love to do. I do marketing. I do public relations.  I can go on and on listing what I do and they joy it gives back to me.  

And oh the people I have met along they way.  I wouldn’t trade that for anything.  Jump aboard the volunteer train, slip out of retirement and start living your new life.  Reap the rewards.