The Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement
You made it!! Retirement is a major milestone in your life. It’s only natural to have some doubts and questions as you approach this major change to your lifestyle. Many people come to this point in their life and wonder how they’re going to fill the hours of their day with no job to go to and, often, less money to spend each month. The Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement was designed to answer those questions. When you use it in conjunction with the other topics covered within this site, you’ll be well on your way to covering all of your options in living the retirement of your dreams.
We can address these items here and that’s part of the fun as you take what may be your first step in creating your future. If money is an issue, we’ll discuss some possibilities to consider that may fit in perfectly with the most important thing of all: spending quality time in a self-discovery process that can become the starting point in your retirement journey. Always remember….
Retirement is a journey!
Let’s begin by bringing a sense of purpose to this exercise by suggesting that you undertake this “challenge” in a very private way – at least in the beginning. Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Turn off the television and put your cell phone out of reach. Retreat into a quiet surrounding where you can explore the silence of your mind, heart and inner self. They exist – and it’s time to get to know them better! But you need to take your time. This is not something to rush through. You can even do this exercise more than once because there’s a lot to explore. You’ve spent decades becoming the person that you are today. It might take a little while to explore the incredibly complex human being that you look at in the mirror every day. Do you really know yourself as well as you think you do? Let’s find out.
The Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement starts with your mind and unlocking your Memory Bank.
If you haven’t done so already, find a quiet place to sit with a notebook in hand. It’s time to get serious. If you haven’t started taking notes yet, I strongly suggest that you do so. Starting a Retirement Journal, if you want to call it that, is not a bad idea. Find a quiet place and make sure you have at least an hour to get started. This will probably take more than one session. Take your time answering these questions. You’ll probably find that one question might trigger some long-forgotten incident pertaining to another question. You’ll find yourself recalling things long after you’ve completed the task. Capture those thoughts and keep them in your journal as you begin the process of understanding yourself as an individual a little bit better. The Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement is designed to be an ongoing process that you can come back to again and again. It starts out easy but you'll begin to see how they will help you explore your past to guide you in designing your future. Remember....
These are easy questions.
They’re more fact-based than the next two topics. Be as thorough, honest and complete as you possibly can. It will help you prepare for the next phase of our journey as we explore the matters of your heart.
So, let’s begin. Go through the questions that follow. Write the answers down in your notebook or journal and write them as if no one else will see them. During this process, you will never be asked to reveal these innermost thoughts to anyone. Be as detailed as you can – write down anything that occurs to you as you recall each of the times in your life. We will come back to these questions a few times. We’ll begin by testing what you recall with the aid of questions that should bring back a few memories for further exploration.
Take out your journal and begin to answer each question as completely as possible and to the best of your recollection. As you think about your past by using the questions as a guide, you’ll start to record everything that you recall in reference to different time periods. In the process, you’ll be listing what you think you accomplished in life. Most people go through their whole life without ever doing that but it's a critical part of the Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement.
Go back to your earliest memories.
Go back to kindergarten if you can or even further. Try to recall what was happening around you and what you were doing. Can you recall any feelings? It will be surprising what comes to mind once you start to think about it so be sure to write it all down. As you hit a dry spell and the thoughts are fewer and farther between, mentally review what you can remember about the different periods of your life – every year and grade in school, if you can. As you start to get to high school and college, think back to how you chose your ultimate profession (if that applies) and how you formed the important relationships in your life. If you married, what did you do together before that? How did you spend your time?
For as long as you can, you should spend the time emptying out your brain of all the memories that stand out. So, without further delay, let’s begin The Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement. Here are the questions….
1. What is your earliest memory? Write as many details as you can recall.
2. What is your earliest memory of school? Do you recall your first day?
3. Can you name all your teachers by grade? Make a list.
4. Can you name your friends and classmates?
5. What were your favorite subjects? What were your least?
6. Who were your favorite teachers? Why?
7. How did you spend your summers and free time? What gave you the most enjoyment? Why?
8. Do you have any hobbies? Did you ever have any hobbies?
9. What were your earliest thoughts on a profession? How did they change?
10. Were there any other professions that you considered?
11. Were there any obstacles that kept you from pursuing a dream? What were they?
12. What was your most enjoyable job?
13. What was your biggest accomplishment? What were some of the others?
14. What was your biggest disappointment? What were some of the others?
15. Where did you go on your best travel experience? Why was it the best?
16. Are there places you would like to go now? Do you have a list?
17. Was there something you always wanted to try or do? Flying, deep sea diving or something else? List as many as you can, no matter how crazy.
18. Did you ever learn to play an instrument?
19. Did you ever want to learn a language?
20. Is there anyone you would like to meet or see again?
21. Have you ever researched your family history or had a desire to?
22. Did you ever have a garden?
23. Do you like to cook? What’s your favorite food?
24. Do you have any skills or are there any you would like to develop? Photography, writing, singing or playing an instrument, woodworking, golf or painting?
25. Do you like to read? What were some of your favorite books? Why?
26. What were some of your favorite movies? Why?
27. Did you have a favorite actor or actress?
28. Did you have a favorite character in a movie or book?
29. What music do you/did you listen to? Did you have a favorite artist?
30. What sports did you follow? Did you have a favorite athlete?
31. Who were some of your heroes? Do you have any heroes now?
32. If you could meet five people right now, who would they be? Why those five?
33. If you could meet five people from history, who would they be? Why those five?
34. Is there anything you would like to do that you feel you can’t do? What’s stopping you?
Remember, if thoughts keep coming keep writing. It's very important to capture everything that comes into your head. That's how you can completely customize the The Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement and make it work for YOU.
That’s a great start! Hopefully, you did your best at answering those questions and, even better, had a little fun doing this exercise. It’s a relatively simple self-examination that is best accomplished by being brutally honest with yourself and the first step is to acknowledge and accept the fact that you cannot change the past. You can use it to guide your future and see where you have been but it’s similar to the experience of watching the wake that a boat leaves as it’s moving forward. It’s a track of where you’ve been, but it doesn’t have anything to do with where you want to go. There is value, however, in examining the different events that formed your own path through life.
Your dreams were there for a reason.
Start to list the things you never “got to” – or the dreams that never quite came true. What were the things that just never materialized in your life? This is not meant to be judgmental. It’s just the way things happened. Everyone has things they intended to do but were never able to do them for some reason. List them out as completely as possible and write them as if no one is ever going to see them. There’s a saying that basically says, “dance like no one is watching” and that is precisely what you should do here. Did you ever want to learn how to play an instrument, play golf like a pro, fly a helicopter or climb Mt. Everest? List it! It's all part of The Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement.
There was a reason you wanted to do these things!
You won’t be finished with this in one day because you should regard this as work in progress just as we all are a work in progress. If you follow the advice and guidance on EnjoyRetiredLife.com, you’ll find yourself adding new things to your list. The excitement will continue as you look at your list and make plans to follow your dreams. The Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement was designed to be your instruction manual for getting the most out of your Golden Years.
Now, let’s start to look at an even more private area of your life….
Your Heart
"Wherever your treasure is, there the desires
of your heart will also be…."
The above quote is from the Book of Matthew (Chapter 6:21) and there have been many interpretations of it. It might be worthwhile to take a few minutes to contemplate what your interpretation might be. While many people have much sadness in their lives as they reach their supposed Golden Years, we will be putting those aside for the most part and concentrating on what has brought you happiness in the past and how this can be utilized to bring you even more happiness in the future. The Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement can only work when make your best effort to get know who you really are.
It’s interesting that the Book of Matthew uses the word “treasure” because it denotes the best of the best and something so special you will go to great lengths to protect it. For most people, their family is what they treasure most – time spent with a spouse, children and grandchildren are a part of most people’s dreams. For others, it’s time with friends and, for many, it’s time involved with a favorite activity. Again, this is not meant to be judgmental in any way.
People treasure different things in life. It’s time to take this a little bit further and look deeper into what you treasure and why. Just as you did in recalling the memories in part one of this exercise when you delved into the distant memories locked up in your brain, find a quiet and secluded location as we explore your emotions in a way you may not have done before.
Try to free your mind of all distractions and enter into as calm a state as you can. You’ve had decades of memories and feelings, and they’ll probably start coming back as pictures in your mind as we do this exercise. Think back to the times when you were your happiest and take out your journal and describe all that you remember. Hopefully, there’ll be many happy moments to recall.
What were you doing?
What were you feeling?
What stood out the most?
Write these things down. Make sure you capture all the happy moments in your life in as much detail as you can remember. The longer your list the better!
Now, think back to all the dreams you had for your life. What were you able to achieve? How did that make you feel? What are the dreams still left for you to accomplish? What about them still attracts you? Don’t give up on any of them – write them down – there is something in there that may hold a key to a more satisfying future. Remember…
The Self Discovery Process for Retirement
is designed to multiply the happiness in your life!
What many people conclude from this exercise is that, when they look at their happiest times, it was a product of some very simple things and, most of the time, it was being with people they loved and enjoying their company. For the most part, we can make this happen whenever we make the time for it. In retirement, there is more time than ever to create new memories with those we love. But now, let’s take this a little further. In the above exercises, many people do a little holding back. There’s a little voice in their brain that tells them things like……
“You’re too old for that”
“You can’t do that anymore”
“You don’t have enough money to do that”
“You don’t have anyone to do that with”
Does that sound like you? Was there a little voice holding you back as you made your list? Try turning it off for a moment and take away all the constraints that are in your mind. Make a game of it. Think about winning the lottery and having all your money issues go away. What would you do?
Think about being twenty years old again – what would you do with all the free time you have now?
If you could do anything in the world and were guaranteed success at it, what would you do?
Now some people might think this is a silly game or an exercise in frustration, but I don’t agree. I contend it’s a very meaningful process to unlock your innermost desires and create a new future for yourself. How do you take your dreams and desires and turn them into real experiences? Our dreams of sailing the world on a yacht have turned into smaller trips on higher-end cruise lines where the passenger list numbers in the hundreds rather than the thousands and you are pampered every moment you’re on board. Want to be treated like royalty? You can buy that feeling on one of those cruises.
And, if you can’t afford that, think of things that you can do to compensate. A day at a nice spa can be something you look forward to every once in a while. Get creative and find out ways to get as close to that dream experience as you can. Maybe you can’t afford a trip to a castle in England, but there are virtual tours that will give you an idea of what it’s like and there are books that can supplement that experience and take you to another time.
Finding out what lies buried in your heart provides valuable insight into the next phase of our journey in personal discovery – your inner self.
If you create the world with your thoughts, and there’s an emotional center we call your heart, there must be a place where they meet because we are humans who think and feel at the same time. How do we resolve the thinking part of our beings with the emotional waves that swirl around within us? These are questions that philosophers have wrestled with for thousands of years and that place has been described in various ways with words like conscience, spirit and soul but, perhaps, the easiest to understand is your Inner Self.
It's a part that doesn’t show up in an autopsy like a brain or a heart and no one knows quite how it’s formed or to get inside to someone else’s although there have been many attempts to do exactly that. But those attempts will never work – that inner place is private property and no one else can see it but you. Yes, you can share it with others and give other people glimpses of what’s inside, but you’re the only one who can know what’s really inside, buried deep in the memories and the emotions of the past. There’s a “you” that exists because of this overlap of experiences, events, thoughts and feelings based on your processing of that has transpired in your life and created your Inner Self.
This part of the process is mysterious but filled with beauty that only you can create. How you express it, if you choose to, is completely up to you. You have a spiritual existence that is as unique as your DNA and waiting to be fully explored and shared in a way that is right for you. Museums are filled with the way that was right for Picasso and Monet. Libraries are home to the way that was right for Dickens, Shakespeare and Hemingway. And there is a creative path forward that only you can travel but you need the guidance of your Inner Self. You need to get to know yourself in a way that you have never done before. That’s what the Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement (and the website) was designed to help you do.
Getting to know yourself may sound like a selfish and self-absorbed exercise but it is anything but that. The Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement was designed to help you understand your reason for being. You were created for a purpose and that purpose was to share what you have with others. Your experiences and the way you reacted to them have formed a mosaic of your life that you can help others learn from. The way you do that is totally up to you but the clues to the best way to do that lie within that deep, hidden place we call your Inner Self.
Whenever you purchase any tool or sophisticated gadget, there is an instruction manual that you’re encouraged to read. We all know not everyone does. The truly sad part is that most people ignore the instruction manual that is contained as part of your Inner Self. They look outside for advice and seem to think it’s good to be part of a crowd and it feels good to have the approval of others. That’s all fine, unless they are failing to get the most important approval there is: the satisfaction and fulfillment of their Inner Self.
It’s never, never too late for that. Decades of living should give you a database of facts to sift through and use. We all have something to accomplish – something that we were born to do. Something that will provide inner fulfillment and help other people at the same time because, in the end, that’s what provides the happiness that lasts. There is something you can offer that no one else can. Whether it’s a work of art, your best home cooked meal or a story that will help others benefit from your experience. I fully believe everyone is called to do something. NOW is the time to do it!
Thank you for taking The Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement!
I hope it helped you.
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The Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement is designed to help you reach the top and find as much happiness as you can in this wonderful period of your life!
The Self Discovery Challenge for Retirement is copyrighted by James Conner with all rights reserved. No part of the Challenge may be reproduced without the permission of the author.
