Balancing Your Needs and Desires After “Retirement”

Aspiring Buds - 2023

Sierra Nevada, NV

 Equilibrium and Fulfillment

It’s a common life experience that sometimes you may have to forgo satisfying a desire in order to commit time, effort and perhaps financial resources to fulfill a necessity.

This is more frequent during your earlier years when life’s responsibilities required such choices. It often meant that wants or desires that you considered non-essential were put off. Perhaps they were never fulfilled, but hopefully, simply deferred and remembered in the well of your memory.

The desire to fulfill a myriad of responsibilities whether at home, work or community, springs forth from the nature of your character. Your cumulative experience and satisfaction derived from meeting your responsibilities further strengthens and develops it. Your focus on various achievements becomes a way of life.

Visions of Change

As you begin to envision life after the end of your career, your perspective about life will evolve. You may find yourself remembering desires deferred and re-evaluating your wish to fulfill them and perhaps, new ones.

At that time, it may seem unusual to shift your focus more toward those desires. After a lifetime of deferring them, as you fulfilled many responsibilities, you are probably going to place them in a different perspective as you have the ability to do so.

Choices and Balance

One of the hallmarks of life after the end of career is the significant decrease in what is asked of you by others. This is accompanied by your increased ability to choose when and how to apply your time and energy.

In order to optimize the result of your choices, it’s critical for you to recognize the importance of creating balance in your new life. To discern the difference between your needs and desires. Each contributes a measure of satisfaction on your path to renewal and fulfillment.

The pursuit of interests long deferred are really nice to experience. It’s wholesome to have fun and feel the sense of rewards you have earned. Yet, they are not essential in the way that your needs are. It's also important to recognize that those types of activities are not likely to fulfill your needs the way that your career did. 

Why is that?

Your career provides you a major means to fulfill your purpose in life. The magnitude of that need creates a necessity. Your profession is a source of satisfaction that plays an important role in realizing your potential.

When your career ends, your purpose in life does not. It has a natural, persistent way of enduring that yearns for fulfillment. 

Physicians who experience optimal feelings of renewal and fulfillment after their end of career, are those who have achieved a wholesome life balance.

To experience that after your career ends, it’s very beneficial to find a way to apply the skills, knowledge and wisdom that you exercised during the course of your career. This is an important part of creating your new life and there are a myriad of ways of how to do it.

One important goal of that adjustment is to continue to actualize your potential in this new season of your life.

Your Enduring Identity and Life’s Purpose

Your profession provided you the means to apply your skills and experience satisfaction. It was a major medium to realize your potential.

For most of us, our internal identity will endure beyond the end of career. Clarity of Who we are, our character and life’s purpose remain intact. It’s What we do or don’t do that changes.

The feeling of satisfaction derived from fulfilling your purpose as well as your potential, is something you will probably feel that you need to continue to experience…as is commonly the case. That satisfaction was a major element that nourished you during challenging times throughout your career. It’s natural that this familiar satisfaction is a true necessity that you will likely need to continue to experience.

Yet, it’s common for it to not be fully recognized.

Instead, often the focus in on “staying busy,” primarily with fulfilling wants that have been long deferred.

And yet, the reality is that it’s essential to fulfill both. The key is to recognize these natural needs and desires…and fulfill them in a balanced, effective way.

The Point of the Matter

The point of seeking clarity about what is or is not a necessity is that it provides you a means to better realize the purpose of your end of career transition. Fundamentally, it’s the path to create a new phase of your life that is characterized by renewal and fulfillment. A  critical feature of your future lifestyle is that it provides you the means to continue to feel the satisfaction you experienced throughout your career while simultaneously having lots of fun.

You are world’s expert on this matter. You can discern, choose and celebrate!

Date Updated: February 3, 2023

PS: Would you like to learn more about how to prepare yourself and your practice for the End of Career Transition? You may be in solo practice and wish to carry out a succession or outright sale; perhaps you are in group practice or are otherwise employed. I provide consulting/coaching services that are tailored to your specific needs. Click here to request a complimentary introductory conversation.

Visions and Fantasies - 2021

Sierra Nevada, NV