The Nine Key Factors of Retirement Success
What are the most important attributes of successful retirees? In our work with retirees and experts in both Canada and the United States, we have identified the nine most common keys to
retirement success..
1) Healthy Aging
The most commonly cited key to success was to maintain one’s health through retirement. If we don’t feel good about ourselves or our lives, we undermine all of the other success factors
that may be in place in retirement. The most important element of healthy aging is our mental outlook rather than our physical state. “Wellness” refers as much to how we view our health
as whether we are physically fit. In retirement, stress management becomes a crucial element of healthy aging. The retiree who has a “hardy personality” appears to best be able to handle
the stress of retirement.
2) Financial Comfort
Some retirees feel that a happy retirement is guaranteed by financial security. However, there is no price tag on successful retirement. Financial comfort refers to a retiree being able to
manage their life in a satisfying and fulfilling way using the resources that they have. If financial discomfort contributes to retirement stress, then this element is not in place. Many retirees
are able to enjoy happiness with far less than others, simply because they have the ability to “cut their coat by their cloth.”
3) Nurturing and supporting family and social relationships
We all have a basic need to share our lives, experiences and life journey with those closest to us. Not only can the presence and comfort of a family member, partner or friend decrease our
stress level, but can also provide us with stimulation and purpose. In retirement, family and close relationships may offer us the validation that we may have received in the workplace.
Those relationships give us the opportunity to “connect” on many levels with someone close and to share ourselves. Psychologists have identified our desire to share ourselves as a basic
human need. This need is often satisfied in the activities that we enjoy with friends and family.
4) Positive outlook on life
Our outlook on life both strengthens and is strengthened by the degree to which we have a ‘hardy personality’. This is a combination of our current life satisfaction and our projected life
satisfaction and is directly related to how happy we are with our lives in general. When we gauge our happiness, it is important to look at how happy we are all of the major areas of our life.
Happiness is how you live your life. Happiness is an action--not a result. As we look at the future in retirement, what changes do we foresee in those areas that will either add to our overall
happiness level or present a potential stressor?
5) A positive definition of ‘work’
Our work is the thing that we do to contribute our skills, experience, labor or knowledge to society in some way. Even when we leave the traditional workplace, we still have a need to share
our workplace strengths and transferable skills. Not only can work provide us with meaningful activities in retirement, but we can find ways to replace the five needs that the workplace
provides to contribute to a successful retirement. Finally, if we have a positive attitude towards the workplace, then the desire to have a retirement free from any kind of work becomes
irrelevant. A wise man once said, “If you love what you do, you never have to work again!”
6) Meaningful activities and leisure
Leisure is a fundamental human need. We use it to recharge our batteries, to act as a diversion in our lives, to create excitement, anticipation or simply to rest and contemplate. Things
change, however, when leisure becomes the central focus of our lives. Leisure, by its very nature, loses its luster when it is the norm in our life rather than the diversion. For many retirees,
the idea of leisure is associated with "not having to do anything". In the end, a lack of stimulation affects our mental and emotional state and then ultimately our physical well-being. There
is a big difference between "time-filling" activities and "fulfilling" activities that we look forward to. In retirement, leisure activities often replace workplace functions to meet the basic needs
that we have.
7) Healthy attitude towards life transitions and aging
While this is directly related to the strength of our ‘hardy personality’, we can often be sidetracked by life’s transitions and the realization that we are ‘getting older’. Our ability to ‘roll with
the punches’ is a key factor in stress management. There are life transitions that we can expect in retirement; sociologists have identified at least six separate “life transitions” in the
retirement phase alone. Coupled with the predictable changes are those unpredictable life events that take the best laid plans and set them aside. Perhaps the greatest transition of all is the
one that we see each time we look in a mirror and see ourselves age. It is easy to forget that aging need not be in our minds. As Satchel Page once asked, “if you didn’t know how old you
are…how old would you be?”
8) Feeling in control
Psychologists have noted that human beings are either ‘self-directed’ or ‘other-directed’. The person with a directed personality is one who is not afraid to make decisions and feel that they
have some control over their life. This relates not only to our ability to handle life’s transitions by accepting that there will always be things beyond our control, but it also causes us to make
plans in order to have some influence over those parts of our life that we do feel that we can control. In retirement, our ability to make plans and decisions is called upon even more than
when we were in the workplace. Those retirees who are unused to taking control, or who tend to feel that they have no control in the path of their life subject themselves to increased stress
and a feeling of hopelessness.
9) Spirituality
One of the key elements of the hardy personality was “connectedness”, or how we view ourselves in relationship to our world and beyond. The foundation of a successful retirement is the
understanding of what the primary aim of our life is; this gives us our sense of purpose and defines ‘fulfillment’ in our activities, relationships, health and money. If we don’t have a sense of
purpose, what gets us up in the morning? The concept of ‘living on purpose’ is a great descriptor of a successful retirement. Our life dreams and the goals that we set to give our life
meaning comes from this life purpose.
There is no more fatal blunder than he who consumes the
greater part of his life getting his living.
- Henry David Thoreau
Your Past Life Successes
We also mark the transitions in our life by the major successes that we have enjoyed. Think back to those defining moments in your life when you accomplished something that has really
stood out in your memory. These accomplishments don’t have to be earth-shattering “save the world” kinds of events. Differentiate between public (what the world can see) and private
(what you see in yourself)
AGE
SUCCESSES
PUBLIC
PRIVATE
0-10
11-20
21-30
31-40
41-50
51-60
61-70
71+
These exercises enable you to look at the past and to draw some lessons that may help you handle your transitions to new phases of your life in the future.
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Phone 416-968-1081, or contact us at rcarter@assante.com
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