Turning What You Love Into What You Do

Retirees tend to miss two aspects of their full-time work life: a sense of purpose and the social connections work provides. Retirees can fill these voids with retirement activities that result in social capital. Social capital comes from good things good people do for others to make their communities a better place. Follow these two examples for inspiration! ...

Social capital is a set of shared values and resources that allow individuals to work together in a group to effectively achieve a common purpose. Two local examples represent the many ways community members contribute social capital and work together to live harmoniously. ...

An outlet is often an extension of who you are. It’s part of how you turn what you love into what you do. It fits with a healthy lifestyle like exercise and good diet. An outlet is important when working full time as it can provide release from the tensions of work. It may be more important in retirement when people have more time on their hands. ...

Necessity remains the mother of invention and technology is that vehicle. From the EZPass to the iPhone and now ChatGPT, we can't afford to "rust on our laurels" during our golden years. The essence of change, innovation and disruption expose the need for increased lifelong learning, which is an opportunity to stay young. ...

Retirement is a time to think broadly with no boundaries, to let it all hang out, shoot for the moon and dance like no one is watching. Maybe for the first time in your life, you can do what you want without concerning yourself with what others think. It’s no longer necessary to follow traditional rules and routines. It’s a time to reenergize and reinvigorate, rekindle old interests or resurrect an earlier passion. ...

Considering Boomers have additional time to volunteer and there are millions of them, we can expect a significant increase in the amount of community service they can provide. When Boomers volunteer, they benefit (psychic income) as do the individuals benefitting from their generosity and the community is better off, as well….win-win-win. ...

Retirement is a ripe time to take up that painting class you always wanted to take. Get involved in community theater, join a choir, or play a musical instrument. Rewind to your youth and ask yourself if there were artistic things you wanted to do but were unable to then. Now is the time!  ...

The skills we need to navigate through our work life are also applicable to navigating life itself. We're starting a series this fall discussing how these themes and qualities intersect, starting with the all-important one (especially for people 55 and older): adaptability. ...