Why I Retired From Retirement Coaching

Helping retirees escape from Retirement Hell is exhausting and hard on me and that is why I’ve decided not to do it anymore.

Sometimes I feel like the priest in the movie “The Exorcist” doing the equivalent of an exorcism trying to free a retiree of evil spirits.

I know the process well, having been through it a number of times - the feelings of fear, anxiety, and helplessness. I really feel for them as they struggle – maybe I feel a little too much having been through it once myself.

Some telltale signs of demonic retirement possession include:

• A loss of confidence in one’s abilities

• A hatred of one’s company or boss

• A feeling of being a victim

• A feeling of helplessness

• Feeling like you are living in a fog

• A loss of friends

• Drinking too much, eating too much

• Men stop shaving, women stop going to the hair dresser

• Spending hours in front of the tv searching for answers

• Talking to yourself because no one else understands what you are going through

• Not wanting to do things that were fun before

Once a retirement possession is confirmed we start work on finding a way of making the pain go away but first we need to nail down what that pain is.

It could one or more of a number of things a grudge about a coworker, a bad boss, fear of running out of money about not being good enough to find a new job, about being too “old.” I could go on and on.

Believe me - it is a long exhausting process bringing someone back from the dark side.

Sadly because of the Great Resignation brought on by the pandemic and what is happening to older workers right now I expect that “exorcisms’ will continue to rise and like I said I just don’t have the strength for it anymore.

There has to be a better way

One day when I was preparing for another exorcism I had one of those “aha” moments. It occurred to me that I wouldn’t have to pull people out of Retirement Hell if they weren’t there in the first place. That made sense to me – retirement shock could be prevented by dealing with the situation before it can even set in. We could nip it in the bud so to speak.

What I’m talking about here is about preventative retirement medicine

The goal of preventive retirement medicine is to create awareness and protect, promote, health and well-being, and to prevent disease, disability, and premature death.

To achieve a satisfactory retirement outcome people need to start working on things, and putting things in place 3-5 years before their planned retirement transition date.

In that time frame near retirees can develop talents or cultivate new interests. They come up with lots of possibilities that need to be explored. They then conduct experiments and test things out so they can come up with the best life possible.

Every retiree before retiring needs to find ways to fill the big hole that is left behind when they leave their full time job, something that replaces the positive aspects of a career; something that is challenging, something that requires them learning new things; something that allows them to contribute; something that involves social interaction, something they can get lost in and makes the time fly by.

If they do that life will be pretty good and people like me wouldn’t have to do retirement exorcisms anymore.

Retiring from work is simple. Figuring out what you are going to do with the rest of your life is the hard part.

We wrote our new book “Longevity Lifestyle By Design” to educate and prepare people for the many non-financial challenges they will face when they transition to retirement.

It was written to equip them with the framework, insights and strategies on how to live your best and longest life.

After reading it you will know exactly what you need to do, what not to do, and more importantly WHY.

Our mission is to help as many people as we can avoid falling into Retirement Hell so we made the decision to give it away for free.

You can download your free copy here.