Emotions

People ask the question: what is retirement coaching?

Let me begin by mentioning two things that retirement coaching is NOT: it does not cover issues of financial planning nor mental health. There are many specialist practitioners in these two areas.

However, between those two practices, there is the emotional makeup of a retired/soon-to-retire individual. Why is this important? To answer this, I like to think of how emotions (happy, sad, angry, bored, frustrated, restless etc.) connect to two other aspects of who we are.

The first aspect is behaviour. How often have you seen a person lash out and behave badly because they are expressing an emotion such as anger or frustration? So it is not hard to believe that a retired person who hasn’t settled into a contented emotional pattern may start to impact those around in a negative way. This can’t be good in the longer term.

The second aspect is understanding. A retirement coach tries to help the retired person come to understand the world of postwork and the client’s place in it.  So, for example, what kind of balance should the client strike between activity and leisure. Yes, emotions enter into this equation. There is no universal answer to this; each person will find a balance, and in this it’s useful to get some help.

Yes a retirement coach will charge for the service but why not think of this as an investment (amortised over time) in your emotional future; no different from gym membership and probably a lot cheaper, as six sessions will suffice!

Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.