Image by annechisholm via Flickr

Retirement lifestyle design has a big problem.  

That problem is the word retirement.  I’m not sure where the word retire comes from but as it stands it fails miserably at inspiring. It sounds lame. It sounds boring. It sounds… well, tired.

If you are TIRED in your re-TIREment, who’s surprised?

Retirement is probably a bad word to use to describe the last part of your life because it reflects a negative vision and suggests retreat instead of charge. You stop working. You stop earning an income.You stop dreaming.

But what do you start?

You know what happens when you drive someplace new without a map. You end up somewhere you don’t want to be.  So if you retired without a plan and a mission, expect the same result. And expect not to be too excited about life.  Expect to be re-TIRED.

Now stop and think.

How do you want to finish your life? Where do you want to go? What’s your vision? When you aren’t moving toward a goal you are falling back. It’s just a fact. If you don’t have a mission that gets you out of bed energized each day, then you are re-TIRED. What was your plan? How hard have you been working it? And how big is your dream? If you are re-TIRED, it means you don’t have one.

Retire re-TIRE!

If I had my way, we would retire the word retire from the dictionary because it sets up the wrong expectations and dynamic for a time of life that should be a blaze of glory. Retirement should be a time when you marshal all the skills, talents and resources from your life to this point and pull our all the stops to live life to the max. One of the problems is that by the time most of us retire, our bodies are beginning to fail. There isn’t the energy and resilience. It takes some effort to get it going every day. Who gets excited about being re-TIRED. It wears me out just thinking about it.

So get a dream and make a plan!

Rather than drifting into retirement casually and letting life happen, retirement lifestyle should be built on a mission and have a plan. And that mission has to be one that energizes you. When you have a mission in your retirement, that mission will create energy to overcome the complications from losing physical strength and keep your attitude positive.  Without a mission, retirement is boring and routine. Retirement is re-TIREment, each and every day.

Are you re-TIRED? 

So my question today is: what is your mission? What mission gets you excited and fills your day with activity and generated enough energy to overcome the inertia of life? Or are you just re-TIRED?  What is your dream that makes the difference?