January 2026 – Your Better Retirement

Is It Okay To Be Unambitious in Retirement?

Pensive bald elderly male with gray beard and eyeglasses looking away while sitting at wooden table and leaning on hand

I don’t normally start my blog posts with a definition of a word, but today I’m feeling anarchic – I’m going to make an exception. This whole post is about ambition, and although I’m sure you will all know what the word means, let’s just remind ourselves. This will help set the tone for how the rest of this post will look. Here we go then.

ambition – a desire and determination to achieve success.

There are other definitions, of course, but this one, I think, works well. A desire and determination to achieve success. When you think about it, striving for success is something society has expected from us right from our early years. You went to school – a goal (amongst others) was to get good grades. School completed, you then got yourself a job. Well done. Now go on and get yourself promoted, earn more money, and outdo your peers. We don’t want you to stop now! And you could argue that we were aiming for goals in our baby/toddler days. Come on, get yourself walking now! And those nappies – we need to get you on that toilet, doing it for yourself. Come on – where’s your ambition?!

Why Saying ‘No’ Becomes Just as Important as Saying ‘Yes’ in Retirement

no, refuse, negative, disapprove, stop, reject, dislike, hand, refuse, refuse, refuse, refuse, refuse, negative, stop, reject, reject, reject, dislike

Some of you reading this may remember a character called Zammo Maguire from the UK kids’ show Grange Hill from back in the day. He urged us to “Just say no”, but not for the type of things I will be talking about in this post. That would be far too heavy! I’ll leave that one with you to dig out should you wish.

So you’ve got a lot of spare time now. Other people know you’ve got a lot of spare time. Other people need things done. Who better to go to than people who have now got a lot of spare time? That’s you, that is!

Why Comparing Your Retirement to Others Steals Your Joy (and How to Stop)

Black and white photo with motivational handwriting on a grid notebook page.

So it seems that the above picture is giving you a good idea about my views on this particular topic. Straight to the point. No messing. The trouble is, we all do it, myself included. We’ll explore in this post why we desire comparing ourselves to our fellow humans, with a special focus on our retirement years, of course, and then look at ways we can think more healthily and kick this comparison lark into touch.