What is Your Creative
Retirement Plan?
By Dave Wright
"The idle are a peculiar kind of dead that cannot be buried."
-Oriental proverb
One thing is certain - when you do not have a creative challenge during
your retirement years, the idleness and its accompanying despondency blots
out any chance for happiness and contentment and can even encourage an
early death.
We spend a great deal of time on our retirement financial planning
thinking if we have a roof over our heads and food on the table we're all
set. But no matter how big or small the roof or how limited and abundant
the food, without a creative challenge to fuel your mind and spirit, the
money is meaningless.
There's a story about US President Calvin Coolidge. He died at the early
age of sixty. He had an office but little or nothing was accomplished
there – few came to visit. At his home, he had no hobby or interests. So
empty was his life he used to go down in the cellar to watch the handy man
throwing coal in the furnace.
In Michael Connelly’s novel "Lost Light", the hero, a Los Angeles cop
describes his retirement.
"I was now retired. I was supposedly comfortable. I had a house with no
mortgage and a car I'd paid cash for. I had a pension that covered more
than I needed covered. It was like being on vacation. No work, no worries,
no problems. But something was wrong and deep down I knew it. I was living
like a jazz musician waiting for a gig. I was staying up late, staring at
the walls and drinking too much red wine. I needed to pawn my instrument
or find a place to play it."
That is not a good place to be.
When fuelled by continuous creative challenges, the ability to originate
new ideas does not diminish with age. When you think of your retirement
years, remember age is just a number - health, heart and mind determine
age.
In his book, "Staying Young Beyond Your Years," Dr. Howard Wilcox Haggard
notes that many people have acquired the habit of NOT learning -- they
allowed themselves to get out of the habit of learning.
Don't fall into that trap. If you are planning for your retirement
remember - to be a happy, contented and creatively-active older person is
to make yourself a happy, contented and creatively-active younger person.
If you are retired NOW is the time to step up to the plate and go for a
creative homerun. Create a life work that pops you out of bed in the
morning.
Here are a few extras - retirement add-ons that wrap a blue ribbon around
a happy, contented and challenging retirement.
See don't just look - study the beauty that surrounds you. Take time to
sit on a park bench or on a lakeshore and play the "Positive Game." Make a
mental list of all the positives around you - the laughter of children
playing - a couple holding hands - the structure of a flower - the
movements of a bee.
Spend time with the younger generation - their youthfulness will rub off
on you. My grandchildren keep me young in mind and spirit.
Exercise is vital - even a daily thirty minute hike works wonders. Play
the positive game on your walk. I download motivational books and listened
to them on my portable CD player while I’m walking.
"Do not act as though you had a thousand years to live."
-Marcus Aurelius
Dave Wright is a retired television
reporter and editor of
PPPretirementplans.com a site dedicated to the development of
Positive, Productive, Profitable and creative home based business
opportunities.
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