May 2025 – Your Better Retirement

Forming an Identity in Retirement: Finding the New You.

Blue Morpho butterfly emerging from chrysalis in Heredia, Costa Rica. A beautiful sight of metamorphosis.

So what do you do?

When you’ve spent decades being “the teacher,” “the engineer,” or “the manager,” the simple question when meeting someone for the first time of “So, what do you do?” can be pretty straightforward to answer during working life. But once you retire, for some, this can be a little more challenging to answer. Work is more than a wage; it quietly shapes where we go, who we see, the stories we tell about ourselves, and how we feel that we contribute to the greater good. No wonder many new retirees describe an odd lightness mixed with a tug of disorientation.

Finding Purpose in retirement: A new chapter of meaning.

Retirement is often painted as a golden era – freedom from the daily grind, time to travel, relax and enjoy all that wonderful spare time that is ahead. Sounds nice doesn’t it? It is, if this is how your retirement shapes out. But that, of course, can be easier said than done.

You Are Not Your Job Title: Redefining Self-Worth After Retirement

Senior man tending to pepper plants in an İstanbul garden.

For decades, your name may have been followed by a title – Manager, Teacher, Consultant, the list goes on. Yes, it was a label, but it shaped how others saw you, and perhaps more importantly how you saw yourself. It was an identity, or at least, a workplace identity.

But then comes retirement.

Just like that, all those aspects of how you defined yourself at work have gone. The meetings you led, the projects you completed, all now yesterday’s news. This could very well lead to the question: ‘If I’m not what I do anymore, then who am I?’

This is a turning point in life – one that can present challenges, but also the beauty of fantastic opportunities.