Did you know your retirement may well take up a third of your life? If you're fit and healthy it's likely you’ll live actively another 30 years after you retire even if it's at 70 or so. Retirement means leaving paid employment, your ‘career’ or your ‘job’ - the third or more of your life you spent working for someone else.

You probably spent 25 years ‘getting educated’ with those seemingly all important ‘qualifications’ you needed to get your first ‘proper’ job. The next 40 years, probably punctured with family and children, were spent building your career, your role, your expertise, your significance in life, and to a larger extent, if not all, your identity.

People always ask us not “Who are you?” but “What do you do?” and we reply with our job title shifting the emphasis from our personal interests, feelings and identity, to the role, the job we've taken on for someone else, so subsuming who we really are.

And when the job is gone, what happens then?

The Police Officer

Alan was a Detective Inspector in a UK police force. Two nights before he was due to retire he was called out at 2:00 AM to attend to an incident in town. (He never told me what it was of course) He was doing the job, enjoying the role and his position in the police, he was happy.

His partner was a private detective, very good at finding people and collecting debts. I like to think of  her as a sort of Miss Marple character - you'd never believe she was a debt collector if you met her. The plan was for Alen to join her in her successful business, and a few days later he went with her to recover some money owed by a farmer.

But there was something missing, and Alan ended up being chased off the premises by the farmer with a shotgun. Alan’s partner went back a few days later and successfully collected the debt.

Back to Square One

You see Alan had lost his confidence, he was no longer Detective Inspector Alan, and most importantly no longer had the little plastic card which said so. He was just an ordinary civilian with none of the authority or presence he had before. His role was gone, his identity was gone, his significance in the world was gone. He was back to who he was many years ago when he’d first joined the force and donned the uniform which turned him into someone else. I don't know what Alan is doing now.

When we retire like this, especially from a senior role, everything goes away with the identity we’ve assumed for so long. The company car, the expense account, the concessions, the privileges, the private office, the secretary or PA - the list goes on.

The CEO

Sylvia hadn't really thought about it. She hadn't really planned on ‘retiring’ anytime soon but one day it all stopped and she no idea what to do next. Sylvia was CEO of a successful marketing company she'd helped to build up over 30 years, but now at 65 she was out on her ear.

You see her fellow board members had voted her out of her job, her role, the position of CEO. They made her an offer of a retirement package she couldn't refuse.  The alternative to accepting it would have been messy and probably damaged the company she'd nurtured over the years.

The decision by the board was essentially ageist. The average age of her colleagues was less than 35 and the irony of this was she’d appointed most of them. They’d come to the conclusion she was’ out of touch’ and not keeping up with the times or new technology. She was ‘holding them back’ from directions in which they wanted to go, and probably from some of the mistakes the company had made when she was building her career.

Anyway, the upshot was she was out of a job, and for similar reasons unlikely to find another at the same level. What next? Sylvia had no idea. She was on her own as the stresses of her job had led to a divorce and her children were independent and living in the other side of the world.

What to do - that was the question. Fortunately, Sylvia was introduced to someone who specialised in this transition from a ‘working life’ to a ‘living life’ not retirement into the background, but a new dawn and a new horizon matching her skills, talents and interests. What will you do when it all stops? And yes, it's a when, not an if.

The morning after the retirement party it's all gone.

You can prepare for your ‘life after work’ which may well be the most fulfilling and productive, from your point of view, stage of your life. Don’t leave it too late. Find out about the ‘PowerUp’ retirement transition programme now.