Feeling lost after retirement? Seven ways you can rebuild your identity
Feeling lost after retirement is more common than many people expect. Discover seven practical ways to rebuild your identity, find purpose, and create a meaningful next chapter.
By the time you retire, you will probably have worked for decades, built a career and a professional identity, solved problems, raised a family, met deadlines, and filled your calendar with responsibilities.
Then retirement arrives, and suddenly the structure that has shaped your adult life disappears overnight. And while initially, in the honeymoon phase of retirement you can feel a sense of freedom and excitement, you could soon find yourself wondering: “… but who am I now?”
If you’re feeling lost after retirement, it might help to know that you’re not alone. Many people spend years planning the financial side of retirement, but very little time preparing for the significant emotional transition. As a result, it can come as a surprise and leave us with few immediate solutions.
The good news is that feeling disconnected doesn’t mean something is wrong. It’s just a natural response to entering a new stage of life that requires a different definition of who you are.
Seven ways you can rebuild your identity after retirement
To help you, whether you have already retired and are struggling with your sense of identity and purpose right now, or if you are looking ahead to the next stage in your life and looking for ways to prepare for the transition, we have identified seven ways you can rebuild your identity and create a retirement filled with purpose and meaning.
Here they are:
- Recognise that retirement is a major life transition
- Separate your identity from your job title
- Rediscover old interests
- Give your days structure
- Build your social network
- Switch your focus from achievements to contribution
- Give yourself permission to evolve
Let’s look at each in turn, and how you can take positive action.
1) Recognise that retirement is a major life transition
When they think ahead to retirement, many people often assume that it will feel like a long, permanent holiday. So the reality, once the initial novelty has worn off, can come as a shock.
The truth is that leaving a long-term career can bring up emotions you weren’t prepared for, and the gap left by finishing work can leave many people struggling to work out who they are now, and how to fill their days.
Often we are unaware of how much of our life is shaped by work. For example:
- Our daily routine
- Our social connections
- Our sense of status and purpose
- Our certainty over what we will be doing for the near future
It’s important to recognise the significance of finishing work, and being prepared for potentially feeling lost and listless. This enables you to have perspective over your feelings, to be kind to yourself, to understand this is a phase and will pass, and to motivate you to find solutions so you can move past it.
Think of retirement as less the end of your working life, and instead the beginning of the next phase of your life – one that requires and deserves as much thought, planning and effort as building a career once did.
2) Separate your identity from your job title
When someone asks us what we do for a living, we usually reply with something like:
- “I’m an accountant”
- “I’m a copywriter”
- “I’m a marketing consultant”
We don’t say: I do people’s accounts, I write copy, or I advise on marketing.
This is because what we do for work isn’t usually the labour and expertise we exchange for money, it’s part of our identity. And when we stop working, we lose this significant part of who we are.
Understanding this is the first step in working through any feelings of loss of identity, and finding ways to build a new ‘you’ in retirement.
So how can you do this? Think back to your career, and ask yourself:
- What qualities defined you throughout your life?
- What strengths do you naturally bring to others?
- What do people appreciate about you?
- What values matter most to you?
Also think about your work, and removing your actual job title, think about what tasks you did well and enjoyed. This can help give you a sense of what you are naturally good at and enjoy, and can help you seek out hobbies, education, social groups and volunteering opportunities that can give your life structure and purpose in retirement – and help you develop a new sense of identity.
3) Rediscover old interests
Building a life can take a lot of our time and energy. We invest so much of us in our relationship, family, work and other responsibilities that it’s easy for the things we instinctively love and are drawn to do get gradually squeezed out of our life.
Retirement is the perfect opportunity to rediscover them, and reconnect to a younger part of you that may have got lost or buried over the years.
Think back – as far back as your childhood and teens – and ask yourself:
- What activities were you naturally drawn to?
- How did you choose to spend your time?
- What were your youthful dreams?
- What made you feel happy and excited?
Whatever you used to love, or wanted to do but didn’t, this is your chance to finally do it!
There’s no need to be sensible here. Nor to pick activities that may have some kind of purpose or are ‘trendy’ or ‘appropriate’. You also don’t need to only pursue (or have a right to pursue) things you are or can be good at.
It’s all about having fun and growing into the fully rounded version of you that you were meant to be. So if you dreamed of being in an indie band when you were young, pick up an instrument and start practising how to play! Or if you always loved art, but were told you weren’t creative, go out and buy paintbrushes or book on an art course.
You aren’t doing any of these things to impress others or make money (though it’s not unfeasible you may end up doing both!), but instead just to have fun and find out who you are.
4) Give your days structure
The thought of never having to wake up to an alarm, and instead lie in bed until midday every day might be a wonderful fantasy when you first retire, but you may find that lying around all day with nothing to do can get boring after a while.
Research shows that we are happier and psychologically healthier when our days have routine and structure. It can even have a positive effect on our physical health.
Having a daily routine gives our life a rhythm and purpose that creates a sense of security and stability. It can also enable us to plan times when we are busy, and times we can look forward to relaxing and unwinding. Just think, if every day feels like a Saturday, how special does that eternal Saturday feel?
So how can you create routines and structure when you retire? This comes back to having purpose, and filling your life with activities, health and fitness, and socialising. Collectively, this can give you:
- Morning routines
- Goals
- Deadlines
- Social interaction
- A reason to get moving
When planning your retired life, think about your morning routine. What time do you like to get up, and what do you want to do in your morning?
During your week, what kind of balance of the following do you want:
- Exercising
- Socialising
- Volunteering
- Learning
- Pursuing hobbies
- Family time
- Housework/gardening
- Doing nothing
Also think about how often you’d like to travel and plan ahead so you have trips to look forward to, balanced by time to enjoy your home life.
5) Build your social network
When we work, our colleagues are a ready-made social group (whether we like them all or not!). And this can leave a big gap when we retire, especially if we don’t have a wide social network outside the workplace.
If you are one of the first in your circle to retire, you may also find yourself kicking your heels in the week, looking for people to help fill all the extra time you have now. And research shows that loneliness is as dangerous for your health as smoking.
This is why it’s important to build a new social network, or expand your existing one, when you finish working. This can happen organically for some, whereas others will need to be more purposeful in building theirs.
Here are some ideas on how to grow your social circle:
- Join local clubs
- Attend community events
- Take classes
- Volunteer
- Join walking groups
- Participate in online communities
Not everyone you meet needs to be a new best friend. Think of your social network as a mix of family, close friends, a wider friend circle, acquaintances and people you casually see around. All of them play an important role in making your life more rich.
Don’t be afraid to reach out to people and ask if they want to go for a coffee. Some might not, but others may be up for meeting new people too. Read here how playing pickleball once a week helped me grow my social circle.
If you are looking for more advice on making friends and building a community later in life, you might find these articles helpful too:
6) Switch your focus from achievements to contributions
Much of our working life is centred around measurable achievements, such as:
- Pay increases
- Promotions
- Work targets
- Professional recognition
- Career progress
This measuring of your success can vary from career to career, and from industry to industry. But the effect is the same: your worth is (at least partly) measured by what you create or produce, its perceived value, and your worth and status as a result.
So what happens when you stop working, and this form of measuring success no longer applies?
Some people choose interests to focus on that meet these missing goals. For example, they may take up competitive sports, volunteer in roles that have outcomes and status, or start hobbies that are goal-oriented, such as building collections or learning new skills.
For other people, the answer is to move their focus from what they have achieved to what they contribute, and they look for ways to make a difference in the world around them.
To get started with this, you need to ask yourself: “Who could benefit from my experience?” This could lead you to explore a range of different potential opportunities, such as:
- Mentoring people
- Supporting charities
- Sharing your skills
- Helping family members
- Volunteering within your community
- Getting involved in local politics
Purpose often grows when we feel useful and connected to something larger than ourselves. Through this we can give our life a new, and maybe even more satisfying meaning.
7) Give yourself permission to evolve
Too many people assume that by the time they retire, their ‘inner work’ is done, and that all they need to do now is relax. That retirement is a flat plane in which you find your ideal hobby or lifestyle and just enjoy that until you die.
But this can be incredibly restrictive and frustrating, especially if retirement doesn’t feel like how you were hoping or expecting it would.
The real truth is that our identity isn’t fixed – at any age. We are allowed to change, to explore, to make mistakes, and to discover new parts of ourselves.
The person we become in our 60s, 70s and beyond does not need to resemble the person we were at 40. There’s no ‘final’ version of who you are. Just like any stage of your life, retirement is an opportunity to learn more about yourself and to grow.
The only barriers to this are the ones you impose on yourself by expecting something different of yourself, or not giving yourself permission to explore, grow, make mistakes and change.
I give you permission to evolve for the rest of your life – you just need to do the same for yourself.
Feeling lost after retirement doesn’t mean you’re stuck
If you’re feeling lost after retirement, it is important to remember that you haven’t lost yourself. You are just in the process of redefining how you spend your life, what you do and who you are.
You’ve spent your life giving your time, energy and thoughts to others: to your family, to friends and to your employers. Now is your opportunity to think about you, about what you want and where you want to invest your time and energy. It’s time to work out who you want to become next.
Your life after retirement doesn’t need to be smaller than the one you lived before. It can be richer, more meaningful, and more aligned with who you truly are.
And that is as liberating and exciting as it is scary!
