Ralph Carlson Blog

Building a retirement lifestyle means knowing who you are.

Lately I have been struggling with this very important question. What is amazing is that I have experienced this struggle all through my life. And with each struggle I thought I knew the answer. I should have been suspicious when I continued to repeat the struggle. I should have understood that that I was being superficial. I should have known that instead of searching my heart, I was modeling a role. Because I thought that the role that I played in life defined me. When I was a student, I defined myself by the school I attended. After school, it became the job that I held. Occasionally, I would define myself by my family but I strenuously avoided searching my soul to find out what truly defined me.

Now, as I start my life in retirement, I am again trying to determine what is important to me; what makes my compass point north and how to unleash my passion, Now, I wonder how I was ever satisfied with such superficial definitions of me. Why was appearance and association more important than my core values.. I think I learned it. What is it about our society that says that our value comes from associations and not within? Perhaps it is just clever marketing by the education establishment and corporations but I do think that human beings crave the comfort and security of associating with powerful institutions. And I think it is human nature to want to associate with strength.

Retirement leaves you naked and exposed

Today I am free from any associations. Nobody cares what school I went to or who I work for. I am only what I present to the world. The problem is that after all the years of association, I don’t know who I am and what I want. I don’t know how to make a statement about me that defines my life and my actions. After all these years of dependency, can I learn how to stand on my own, make a difference for me and the people I know? It is a challenge because if I refuse to stand up, my life will trickle away with no meaning and no legacy.

I frittered away the early part of my deferring to other priorities. I accepted dependency as a price for my definition of success. I was duped. The promises that made dependency look so attractive were lies. I am searching my soul to find my drivers in life. Better late than never. But many people still deny themselves because they believe the lies that dependency will help them succeed. If you are caught up in a life defined by association, take a minute and ask yourself who you are if the job or the organization goes away. If you don’t know, you can either find out now or wait until you retire – like me. You will face this question sometime and my experience suggests that answering it earlier is better than later.

Time to step up

In retirement, I need to know who I am and nobody cares about my degrees and job title. The only thing that matters is how I treat people; what information or services I can give and the quality of that interchange. I don’t think this means that I must become a different person. It is just that who I am rather than who I seem to be never seemed to be the important part of the definition of me – until now. In this new world, none of these qualities will matter but until then what is important about me is how much I care about providing value to others and the way that I relate to those people to add value to their lives.  Maybe Seth has it pegged.

Are any of you struggling with this as well? I’d like to know your take.