For total wellness humans need balance in their lives. An astute retirement planner maintains that anything that upsets this balance upsets our overall sense of well-being.
Stopping work is a life changing event
and unless we are proactive in restoring the status quo it can be unsettling at best and down right destructive at worst.
Lets take a look at a simple but effective way of establishing the retirement planner.
According to our retirement planner, we need to think of our lives as being represented by a wheel with 6 spokes running out from the hub to the rim. The six spokes need to be straight, strong and the same length otherwise the wheel will wobble and your life will be a bumpy ride!
If one or more parts of your life are out of kilter you will battle to be effective, you will become anxious. This will negatively impact those around you and upset the quality of your life. So, unleash the retirement planner in you and take control!
A balanced life
Leading a balanced life requires attention to each of the six primary areas of our lives. These are, in no particular order:
- family and home
- physical and health
- finance and career
- social and cultural
- spiritual and ethical
- mental and attitudinal
Our retirement planner goes on to say that in each area, we should have a mission and goals. This weaves our lives together like a fabric and gives us structure and stability. To a large extent, the emphasis we put on each of these areas will depend on our individual value systems but the point is that we need balance.
Balance doesn't come by accident, it comes by careful design and on retirement there will be some serious challenges to maintain it.
Work and finance are critical to your balance
When you stop working just about every area of your life will be affected. Think about it for a minute – it will certainly affect your career – you wont have one any more! Your finances will be affected and you will be at home all the time so it will affect your family life.
You may feel at sea from the change in your routine and you may have fewer 'important' decisions to make which may affect your frame of mind. These things are all associated with retirement but you can avoid the negative consequences by being proactive and working through them with your retirement consultant.
Being aware that this will happen and having specific concepts to work on will go a long way in helping you adjust and address the imbalance that no longer working will cause.
If you haven't done this exercise before then do it now. Spend some time re-scripting your life through developing a mission and goals in each area. Get yourself a diary, or mind map program, and making sure that you give attention to each area document your life map.
And finally, ensure that it's all in balance!
Retirement Plan: Your road map to retirement success.
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