Creative Responses to Retirement

Each retiree is faced with a similar dilemma of self-reinvention.

As you have learned in the earlier scenario, not responding to a change in one's lifestyle can lead to depression, restlessness, and unhappiness. If you choose not to be proactive, retirement can be boring, monotonous, and unimaginative. It is important to recognize that not doing something, that is, not responding to a change in the circumstances in one's life is "a choice." It is the response of least resistance, the least imagination, and ultimately, the least satisfaction. The alternative is to create a retirement tailored to suit your needs, wants, and desires, it is hard work. It takes extensive planning and may lead to minor or major changes in one's lifestyle and financial arrangements.

Twelve Retirement Strategies

"Consider the following list of twelve practical short-term retirement strategies. They are designed to help you smooth the journey from the regimented world of work to a very personal and open-ended retirement lifestyle. Don’t be fooled by their simplicity. These simple strategies will keep you sane and grounded. They will also help you avoid the pitfalls many people experience in retirement including boredom, depression, a lack of purpose, and weight gain.

1. Maintain Your Daily Routine

A normal daily routine will help to maintain your sanity and provide a happier outlook on life. Keep your daily routine of eating and sleeping the same. Get up about the same time as you always did and go to bed at the regular time. Nothing can disrupt your sleeping patterns or your digestion more than skipping your traditional breakfast, watching triple late night movies, or spending an afternoon napping.

Rule of thumb

If the sun is up, you should be too.

2. Make a Daily Things-To-Do List

To provide some short-term goals, and to make sure that the things you want to get done -get accomplished, make a things-to-do list each evening before you go to sleep. Make the list short, achievable, and practical. Such as: improve the condition of the visitors toilet, re-organize the drinks cabinet or bar, learn about home recycling, phone Buhari about the terrible state of unemployment in the country, put petrol for car, buy groceries (groceries needs its own list of specific items.)

3. Go out Once a Day

It is important to get out of the household to avoid going stir-crazy. Plan an activity outside your home at least once a day. Make it practical and simple. A trip to the hairdresser, pharmacy, visit a friend etc. Many retirees tend to purchase fewer groceries for each trip, but return more frequently. It gets them out of the house and keeps the groceries fresh.

4. Plan Your Social Life

When people retire, often their daily contact with other people suddenly stops or reduces. People who have been workaholics during their career, in particular, need to re-socialize as retirees, especially if their after-hour friends have tended to be only colleagues from work. Work-related friendships often diminish over time simply because the workplace where the employees met to plan future get-togethers is no longer available to them. You need to reinvent your social life. Ask yourself, “Who can I call? Who can I visit? What group or organization can I join to meet people?” Seek out relatives, other retirees, and volunteer groups, enroll in church activities, go to the club to play tennis, get to know your neighbors. Host a gathering for special occasions such as Christmas or Sallah, invite colleagues over for board/card games make a celebration of it, start a reading club among your peers or join a reading club, hook up with friends for sports nights, arrange barbeques, or pool parties for the grandchildren. Plan an interesting trip. Even retirees need a constant change of pace."

5. Reduce Your Food Intake

In retirement, people are generally less physically active than when they were working full time. Most daily workplace routines involve walking, stair climbing, lifting, carrying, bending, and other activities that burned calories and kept your muscles, heart and lungs toned. Those routines are gone. Unless you wish to look like a hippopotamus, consider reducing your overall food intake. You might try eating meals twice a day instead of three times and eating smaller portions at a sitting. One additional benefit of eating less, according to a study of eighteen hundred Americans by the National Academy of Sciences, is longevity. Even retirees who dieted for the first time in their lives were found to increase their life span and live a healthier life over those who did not.

6. Build Exercise into Your Daily Routine (as earlier stated, repeated for emphasis)

Muscles and cardiovascular systems tend to atrophy when they are not used. That is why humans tend to get weaker as they get older. Sitting around watching television, or reading a book, or chatting on the telephone are activities that require minimal effort. Find ways to build exercise into your daily activities. Go for a twenty-minute walk. Climb stairs instead of taking the elevator. Park your car in the middle of the parking lot and walk. Join a health fitness club and exercise all the muscles in your body three times a week. Take a swim fitness class and do your exercises in the water. Go for a walk preferably with a partner early in the morning and let the fresh air into your lungs. If you do any of these activities, your energy and endurance will increase, and you will sleep more soundly.

7. Simplify Your Life

You have accumulated a lifetime of objects, trinkets, outdated appliances, and perhaps clothing that no long fits. Maybe it’s time to consider giving them to the needy, if they are expensive offer them for sale on jiji.ng. Get rid of the clutter in your life. Simplify. Keep the things that are useful and remove the rest.

8. Indulge Your Favorite Hobbies

Most people have favorite pastimes that they enjoy doing when time permits. When you worked full time, these were the activities that you used to look forward to on weekends or on annual vacations: visiting people, golfing, cooking for your family, watching football games amidst fellow supporters, oil painting, playing the piano, or gardening. Make them the centerpieces in your retirement. Spend time doing the things that you enjoy.

9. Improve Your Retirement Skills

Just because you were skillful and successful during your full-time career does not mean that you will automatically become talented in your chosen pursuits, hobbies and pastimes in retirement. What made you good at your previous employment was repetitive training, theory courses, skill-building workshops, week-end retreats, and on-the-job practice. Retirement is no different. If you expect to suddenly become a golf pro, a published writer, or an expert painter simply because you are retired with time to spare, you may be in for a rude awakening. New hobbies take time to learn. Fortunately, there are workshops and courses online for practically every hobby that you can imagine, each designed to help you hone your skills. Do your research. Write for workshop brochures or lists of evening school hobby courses or college catalogs. Scan the advertisements in your favorite hobby magazine and find out where adult workshops or conferences are being conducted. Talk to other hobby enthusiasts. Search the Internet for online workshops you can take at your leisure to develop the knowledge your require. The Internet also has free short video demonstrations (YouTube) and lectures on a variety of topics. Consider travelling to attend a multiple day workshop if local institutions don’t have what you need.

10. Start or join a Support Group

You are not the first person to be retired. Nor are you the only person to work on a particular hobby or project. Virtually every activity of human endeavor has a support group with people of similar interests who will share your enthusiasm for your favorite pastime. There are associations, websites and monthly newsletters for people who enjoy golfing, traveling, etc.; for poets, writers, artists, photographers and musicians; for historians or political enthusiast, gardeners; people who love cooking; chess clubs, volunteer agencies, and religious groups. The list is endless. Begin your research. Find out where a support group is available otherwise start one for your hobby. Talk to people who enjoy similar activities and ask them to join your group. Search the Internet for national and regional associations or converse with other hobby enthusiasts in an online chat room."

11. Lose Yourself in Your Projects

When the late comedian George Burns reached his hundredth birthday, people asked him what he thought contributed to his longevity. “Probably having something to look forward to each day has helped. It gives you a reason for getting out of bed every morning.” Most daily activities, such as shopping, watching television, washing the dishes, or reading a newspaper help to pass the time. But what retirees need in their lives are large projects that challenged them emotionally, physically, and intellectually. What things in your life are you passionate about?

• Volunteering?

• Organizing some event?

• Being creative?

• Using your hands to build something?

• Traveling?

• Being around people?

• Seek out activities that get you involved, excited, and happy.

Keep in mind that extraordinary lives are lived by ordinary people who have a passion for something greater than themselves.

12. GIVE SOMETHING OF YOURSELF EACHDAY

Decide to make someone else happy each day, especially when you are feeling not so happy yourself, even if is to bring a smile to the face of another that is feeling down… you will soon discover that happiness is infectious.. TRY IT AND SEE.