Stay Active In Retirement
Retirement should be the best time in your life, but it does take a little bit of an adjustment to find your groove. This is understandable. After all, you probably worked for decades for at least eight hours a day not counting your commute to work. To enter your first day of retirement without a single appointment on your calendar can be a bit unsettling for some people. They know they should stay active in retirement but they're just not sure how to fill up all of those hours in a day. I started this website to help people do exactly that because I think retirement should be even busier than your work years. The best way to do that is to manage your life from a physical sense, create a social network and keep mentally active and set goals and monitor your progress in each area.
Social activities are a great way
to stay active in retirement.
From a physical standpoint, you want to make sure you have some sense of routine and purpose. You had to be at your desk or at your workstation at a certain time so you should have a similar morning “procedure” to make sure you don’t sleep the day away. I always make coffee in the morning and like to have it started no later than 6:30. That’s not to say I will be drinking it promptly when it’s finished, but I like to know it’s there and ready for whenever my wife is ready for it. It’s a great way to start the day together. Once that’s done, I am ready for exercise which I do four times a week including at least two miles on the treadmill each day. An exercise regime is very important if you want to stay active in retirement. Your exercise can be anything you want although you should design your regime with your doctor to make sure it’s appropriate for your health profile. Some of friends play tennis, pickleball or even a round of golf, remembering that you get more of workout without the cart. You can very easily make these activities into a social occasion which helps you build the social network which so many experts advise. Exercising together or playing a round of golf together can form great relationships.
Most retirees find that their social network grows over time and their calendar gets filled up almost automatically and that’s a good thing. My wife is a member of a book club, a garden club and is a regular at the senior citizens center. She loves the pool in the summer and yoga in the winter and enjoys herself every day and is very determined to stay active in retirement. She’s passing the “social test” with flying colors. She has added to these appointments by learning new skills like mahjong which can be a very good mental challenge as well. She has started a class for new recruits and very much enjoys the game. She does admit that it may not be precisely what the experts meant when they prescribed mental challenges to keep your mind sharp, so she has added puzzles and word games to her morning coffee routine. While she’s enjoying her coffee and assortment of puzzles, I use the time to catch up on the news and see what happened in the business world. There are many ways to stay mentally active, and my favorite activity is reading with a purpose and managing a small stock portfolio. I study all the ways to analyze stocks and make a game of it to see if I can make more money each month than I did the month before. I let our stock adviser manage the big stuff and play around with smaller amounts, but it has helped me tremendously in understanding our finances better and being able to ask our advisor better questions, which he actually appreciates greatly. Learning new skills is absolutely critical for keeping your brain active. Many retirees have started investing clubs or small businesses just to feel more engaged in the world around them. Retirees, in fact, are flocking to the internet in droves to start businesses based on one of their interests. If you can find a way to make money from your hobby, you’ve created a lifetime of enjoyment and, perhaps, some extra money to take some great vacations. Traveling is one of the best hobbies there is and it will keep you active in many ways. We look forward to every trip and have met quite a few people on our journeys with whom we stay in touch.
If you stay physically active and maintain an active social life you’ve greatly increased your chances of having a healthier outlook on life. Keeping your mind challenged with new skills and opportunities to learn is more invigorating than you think and will get you out of bed each morning with a new set of goals to achieve and that’s the best way to stay active in retirement. This should be the most enjoyable part of your life. If it isn’t, you should try to understand why and seek out help. Facing illness or the loss of a loved one is extremely difficult but there is help out there. Life is too short to not make the most out of every day and the simplest changes to your routine can make a huge difference. Sometimes volunteering can be the best way to bring happiness into your own life because when you give happiness to others it has a way of coming back to you. All you need to do is to take the first step. You'll be surprised how many people are willing to help. We live in a great world and there is much to see and do so make a plan to be as active as you can be. It’s time to Enjoy Retired Life!
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