Finding Your Purpose When You Retire: What Comes Next In Your Life? A Guided Journal

Imagine that you are an ancient mariner standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean at sunrise. You are staring at the "edge," the place where the ocean and the sky meet, and wondering, What lies beyond? Your answer would have been "Thar be dragons."

Using this analogy, imagine you are about to retire or have recently retired and wondering, What's out there? What do I do now? Buy that new sports car, take a long vacation, play golf or fish every day, or try to continue working? What's going to get me up in the morning, excited to have another day? Is there a purpose for my life? If so, how do I find it?

There is a lot of information about the financial and medical aspects of retirement but very little about the emotional and spiritual impacts of retiring.

Retirement is a major life transition, which changes everything about how you think about yourself. One day, your identity is defined by what you do for a living; the next day, that identity is gone. You may feel lost, as if "the rug has been pulled out from underneath you." Who are we now?

The good news is this feeling is normal; you are not going crazy. It is part of the normal life cycle. Another piece of good news: using a process known as guided journaling, you will better understand how you got to where you are in your life today and then create your own, personal, "best fit" retirement--one that gets you up every morning, excited for another day to live and serve others, Finding Your Purpose When You Retire.