Life is a Dance

By Contributing Editor Lynnelle Wilson

THE worst thing you can do right after you retire is … commit – to anything.

You won’t be the same person after you stop working. What you think you’ll enjoy right when you retire may not be what you actually enjoy later – because YOU won’t be the same you later.

Here’s why….

Your life choreography will change.

Think of your life as a dance troupe and each day is a series of choreographies and sequences.

• Morning sequence
• Office composition
• Evening composition
• Traveling sequence 
• Relationship composition

Each sequence with a different tempo and different dancers, the entire performance – your life – held together by the centrifugal force of your life’s center: your career.

This doesn’t mean you value your career over everything. It just means your career sets the tempo with which the rest of your life followed.  And if you think about it, that is true for most successful career women.

When you leave your career, the central force defining the tempo of your life’s dance is gone.

Here are the 3 most important things you can do for yourSELF right after you retire…

1. Take time to settle, physically and mentally. You’ll be surprised by how exhausted you are. It’s normal.

2. Let yourself get bored. You’ve likely spent the last 10, 20, 30 years not listening to yourSELF. Self-awareness isn’t a characteristic that easily evolves. Until you STOP the chasing and allow yourself to get good and bored, you won’t hear yourSELF.

3. Trust what you hear. You can change in many ways when you are no longer defined by your career, title, professional reputation. You can’t NOT change. Don’t try to ignore it or fight it – but recognize it and lean into it.

Your dance changes when you retire. Take time and get to know yourSELF before committing to a new choreography. 

P.S. Join me at the Thursday Salon! This week’s topic, “Retirement: Braving the Unknown” is for many of us BOLD-Women who are at various stages of “what’s next” after retiring, and who have a passion for personal growth and life-long learning. Register at no charge here 

Lynnelle Wilson is founder, mentor & chief cheerleader of the BOLD-Women community. After retiring from a successful career, she discovered how much more than a paycheck you leave behind. Now, she’s on a mission to help women redefine their “retirement” paradigm. Rather than a time to slow down and kick back, BOLD-Women seek a mentally, physically, socially, and spiritually active life – post-career. BOLD-Women is a resource and a community for post-career women who are transitioning from a life focused on conventional success to one prioritizing authenticity, personal growth, and exploration.