Are you someone who hopes your life will improve on its own when you retire from work without you having to do anything yourself? Maybe you believe that life without work will be wonderful and you will find it easy to cope , or maybe you are dreading the changes which you believe will come from changing the daily routine from work life to retirement.
You may be waiting for someone else to plan your life for you but it’s important to realise that you have the power in to make the changes you want for your new life. Don’t wait for other people to tell you what to do but decide for yourself that retirement is a chance to change everything if you wish. You can decide what you want and be pro-active in making changes because the best way to initiate these is to start something you’ve always wanted to do because like it or not your life will be different and you have to come to terms that it won’t continue in the same way when you retire.
To enjoy your retirement you have to decide what you want, set your goals, and when you do that, others change in their response to you, when one thing in your life changes then everything else changes too.
So what could you do? Let’s suppose you are always wanted to travel but you’re not sure where to go to or how to make arrangements for your journey. If you know someone who has the lifestyle you would like then get in touch and talk to him or her about where they went, what sort of travel arrangements they made, what costs were involved and as you talk notice your reaction to what you discuss so you become clearer about which aspect of travel appeals to you and what you will do next. Is there something which you could copy? Notice how you feel when you imagine what would it be like to be him or her.
Then put what you learn about the essence of your colleague’s lifestyle that you admire into what you do and notice what happens, how you can do something similar and how almost without effort you are able to look forward to a new lifestyle as you begin to enjoy your retirement.

