Contemplating Your Needs and Desires After the End of Career

Transition in Balance

Sierra Nevada - 2019

The Need for Discernment and Balance to Achieve Personal Fulfillment

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

The fulfillment of myriad 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 digging into the well of desires deferred and re-evaluate 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, 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 how, when and where to apply your time and energy.

In order to optimize the result of your choices, it is 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 is wholesome to have fun and feel the sense of rewards you have earned. Yet, they are not essential. Furthermore, it is 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 means to fulfill your purpose in life. The magnitude of that need creates a necessity.

I addition, your occupation 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. 

It is my experience that those individuals who describe feeling 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 is 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.

So it is that in this next phase of your life, as before, there exists a need for you to discern and create a wholesome balance between your needs and desires. 

Perhaps this should be considered a way that life provides you with the opportunity to apply your experience and wisdom to creating your new lifestyle.

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

My Favorite Season

Consider autumn, as I prefer to call it, for such a grand time mandates the use of a comparably elegant word. 

Autumn presents itself as yellow, orange and red leaves that adorn, then leave majestic trees bare. Consider that it is really a time of nature’s rest, that is emphasized by the cold winters that follow and similarly drive us to seek warmth and comfort.  It is a prelude to an effusion of green leaves that restore those trees to a life of aesthetic majesty that never really went away…they were just preparing in repose.

So it is with you and this season of your life. 

In the course of your lifetime, you have experienced unexpected cycles of trials and triumphs. The trials strengthened and developed your character. The triumphs taught you to take proper pride in your successes all the while balancing them with humility and grace.

Then there was the gratitude you most assuredly expressed to those who lifted you up in so many possible ways. In so doing, you filled their hearts with joy as you and they rejoiced further for your mutual goodwill.

Those were the years of preparation for your latter life when you will be able to more readily balance your needs and deserved desires.

As you think about this, please consider that the fulfillment of your purpose in life is essential to a wholesome, balanced life. It is integral to the actualization of your potential throughout your life and after the end of your career.

What is not so apparent, at first, is that this is a real and ongoing need. Those who recognize this and thoughtfully seek a healthy balance between needs and wants are often those that experience a more fulfilling life after their end of career.

There is a reason why these real life statements are all too often heard:

“You can only play so much golf.” 

“I thought moving to (fill in the name of state) would keep me busy.”

Think about those you know or have heard about that had similar experiences. They are the testaments of hopes and dreams unrealized.

Why does this happen?

Your Enduring Identity and Life’s Purpose

Let’s examine this, starting with what I describe as core ideas:

Your work life provided you the means to apply your skills and experience satisfaction. To the extent that you were purposeful in realizing your potential, your occupation or profession was one means to achieve it.

For most of us, although the end of career is a point in time, our internal identity will endure. Clarity of Who we are, our character and life’s purpose remain intact. It is 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 is natural that this familiar satisfaction is a true necessity that you will likely need to continue to experience.

Yet, it is commonly not 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 is essential to fulfill both. The key is to recognize these natural, healthy needs 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 understand the purpose of your End of Career Transition. Fundamentally, it is a means 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.

Therein lies the importance of your developing clarity about these matters and making sure that you develop your Post Career Holistic Lifestyle Plan _TM  well in advance of your projected end date.

It is optimal to create this prior to your Post Career Financial Plan_. The purpose of this plan is to evaluate whether your financial resources will support your lifestyle plan. As you do so, you may find that your financial resources may require various adjustments in either or both plans and ensure that your necessities and desires are met.

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

Date Updated: September 25, 2021

PS: By the way, do you want to learn more from me about how to get the most out of your life now and begin to prepare for your End of Career Transition as well as the next great phase of your life? I would like to help you. I provide consulting and coaching services that are tailored to your specific needs. Click here to apply for a complimentary consultation.

Golden, Glorious Expression

Sierra Nevada - 2019