After 30, 40+ years working 40, 50+ hours a week on everything BUT yourSELF, you have no idea what you’ll feel like.

Trust me.

What I suggest you SHOULD do right when you retire:

1. Take time to settle, physically & mentally.

You’ll be surprised by how exhausted you are. It’s normal.


This should actually say “Allow yourself to take time…” or probably more like “Force yourself to take time…” Taking time for yourself to purposely NOT be productive goes against every fiber of our programmed being.

When you think you’re ‘taking time for yourself’ by going for a walk, and you spend the entire walk thinking about

• Making plans for the weekend or
• Prioritizing the house projects you’ve been putting off or
• How you’ll find a new life purpose.

That’s not settling. That’s more planning, scheduling, and stressing.

2. Let yourself get bored.

You’ve likely spent the last 10, 20, 30 years not listening to yourSELF. Self-awareness isn't a characteristic that easily evolves. Until you STOP the chasing and allow yourself to get good and bored, you won’t hear yourSELF.



But first, we should probably define what being “bored” actually is.

To be bored: To feel weary because one is unoccupied

Boredom isn’t a lack of enjoyment while doing something not to your liking. When you’re bored, you’re not engaged in any activity or stream of thought. It is a state of complete dullness.

Why do you have to get good and bored - aka: immersed in a state of complete dullness?

You only get to the ‘bored’ stage after you unload the pressure & weight & stress about:

• What you should be “doing”,
• How you compare to some arbitrary, irrelevant yardstick,
• Finding a new “purpose” to your life.

It’s only when you’re able to let the past and the future go that boredom can take hold. And it’s THEN that you’re living in the present moment. The present moment is the only time your authentic SELF exists.



If you want to get to know yourSELF, get good and bored.

When you no longer lead with your career, title, or your professional reputation, you can’t NOT feel the shift. No matter how independent, evolved, mature, strong, outgoing, or WOKE you are - you lose part of yourSELF.

In a divorce or the death of a loved one, you not only lose your partner, you lose your identity as “partner”. When you leave your career behind, you lose that part of YOU & your identity, too.

Our culture celebrates retirement as a happy passage. No one told you retirement would also kill part of yourSELF off.



1. Don’t try to ignore it or fight it or think it’s wrong or a weakness. It’s human. Recognize it, acknowledge it, and lean into it. It’s something you’ve probably not felt before.
2. Analyze what you’re feeling like a research scientist. Journal about it. Listen and trust what comes up.
3. Celebrate and enjoy the accomplishment.
4. Then, when you feel the tug and the pangs from not being productive, accomplished, or in control, give yourself grace and time, and know what you’re feeling is the shifting SELF and know that it is normal.
5. Learn to be still and wait for yourSELF to resurface.

You’ll be amazed at what you hear.

Listen.