I read an interesting article in Saga magazine – Saga.co.uk – this month by Rachel Carlyle. Each month they conduct an in-depth poll of Saga customers to find what there thinking. This month: Life after work.
The article was primarily focused on people retiring. And, yes, I do help clients with retirement planning; it’s often aligned with reinvention coaching.
In the article, Dr Martin Hyde, a gerontologist at Swansea University research shows that finding purpose in retirement is the key to happiness. That’s what people mostly miss about work, and that was reflected in their survey. Of the 21% of retirees who missed their jobs, 69% missed their colleagues, and 68% missed a sense of purpose. ‘There’s evidence that purpose is really important to maintaining health and wellbeing and how well you age.’ He says, ‘If you retire from an active job that engages you and you don’t replace that with other challenging activities, there will be cognitive decline.’
