And none of this question relates to whether you are financially ready to retire or your pension, but whether you have given any thought to what it means to you?

Did you know that there are various stages we move through in looking at retirement and once we get there, and these are ones which may vary person to person, but believe it or not many, if not most, people go through.

Some move through these quicker than others, some reach a particular stage and get stuck there, unable to make sense of what it means or how to move forward, and this is where counselling can help.

In fact, I would say counselling helps at most of these stages, and using counselling to explore what these stages may mean for you can make a massive difference between embracing and enjoying this change in your life and struggling and looking for someone to blame for how unfair and unhappy you are now.

So what are these stages?

1. Long way off – and our focus may be on working, starting a family, enjoying what life brings, and retirement is a distant prospect, and not even on our radar.
2. Almost here – and we may have focused on a date at which we retire, may even have done all that pension planning everyone tells you to focus on, and may have started telling friends, family and colleagues about your plans.
3. Honeymoon stage or maybe the stage you look at and start to tick off things off your ‘bucket list’, do some travelling, buy that car you always wanted; thinking about retirement as a period which may last 25/30 years or more, this stage feels fantastic, but does it represent reality?
4. Fed up stage, maybe disenchanted with what life has become. You have not done what you wanted to, for whatever reason, and life suddenly has no meaning……and suddenly friends and family start to disappear from your life due to illness and death.
5. Time for reality! And maybe time to look at and develop and more realistic view of what retirement means and looks like, and you start to ask questions like, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What do I want from life?’
6. A more balanced stage where you may have reflected on who and what you want during stage 5, and life starts to feel closer to something which is more meaningful, also recognising what we can and cannot do, whether physically or financially.
7. Moving beyond retirement, and perhaps now limited by physical and health issues, so other challenges appear and limit what we looked to do in stage 5 and 6.

Some may move through all stages, for others only some, and how long we stay in each stage again varies person to person.

Often, I see clients at stages 4 and into stage 5, when they are fed up with what retirement has brought them, but ideally look to see clients at stage 2 and into stage 3.

Retirement is not a point in time, or as some people think ‘the end of my productive life’ but as many people are aware of these days a process of change and it is this process which needs to be explored and understood to make the best of it for each of us.

I know, as stepping towards semi-retirement even though I had explored a lot of what it meant for me in stage 2, and jumped into the stage 3 honeymoon, still found I had not done enough of this and needed to go through stage 4 and 5 to reflect, work out what I really want, and in some cases let go of things I though sounded good, and replace them with others.

Whether for you, or someone you know, exploring what retirement means personally can help the process be less frustrating and to find out more feel free to email me at kaizencounselling@hotmail.com or call me on 07544 045713, or visit my website www.kaizencounselling.co.uk