Memo to self: Embrace change – it is your friend

What happens after your working life comes to an end? Fergus Neilson encourages us to look to new horizons and take the opportunity to experience a different way of life.

Shortly after I (semi) retired I was asked by my GP whether I needed any counselling. I declined her offer! Some time after that a well-meaning friend asked me sotto voce whether I was suffering from IDS. “IDS?” I replied, “what’s that?” “You know,” he responded, “Identity Deficit Syndrome, when you aren’t what you once were any more”.

“That’s not the problem,” I retorted. “What is the problem is PDS – Platinum Deficit Syndrome – when Qantas downgrades you from Platinum, to Gold, to Silver and then whatever comes below Silver!”

No more upgrades, no more access to the first class lounge, no more respect when you try to book offline.

In reality though, both syndromes are the same side of the same coin. Being hit by the shock of a change for which you are never truly prepared. It happens throughout life – moving up from primary to secondary education, leaving university for the working world, retiring in your late twenties from a professional sporting career and, of course, retiring from a long life at the corporate coal face.

The attention we once expected, the resources that were once on tap, the accolades and respect we once took for granted, the invitations to lunches and grand finals and afternoons on the harbour. They all trickle down to a stagnant pool, and we are left with what?

The realisation that we never really believed that such a day would ever come. Should have done more planning for the inevitable. Definitely should have put more into superannuation.  Really should have taken more care of health and fitness.

Then the curly question emerges, slowly to be sure, but it does emerge: “What the hell do I do, now that the music has stopped?”

I have sat across my desk from supplicants in tired suits trying to recreate their business careers when those doing the jobs they want are 25 years their junior. I see former colleagues trying to access director roles with charities that don’t really interest them or with small businesses where the risks far outweigh the rewards. I have watched optimists trying to create boutique businesses in markets where you know the target customers will only want to “buy IBM”.  All are a desperate excuse to do anything to avoid fundamental re-assessment and change.

Better, I say, to acknowledge that change is your friend. That you can rarely ever go back to where you were and that, in fact, you would be better off never trying. Look to new horizons that, whether you realise it or not, are generally right under your nose. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, learn to love the “ineffable luxury being owner of (your) own time”.

Perhaps, most important of all, just be excited by the opportunity of experiencing a different way of life: Cultivate the passion you have always nursed but never indulged, live for the moment because there are plenty of people we know for whom the moment never lasted, be grateful for the life you have lived (don’t be introspective about goals you never quite achieved), and learn to be a leaf on a tree – reach out and embrace family, find new friends, re-connect with old friends and jump headfirst into new activities – the more branches the better. None of us is an island.

Finally, as George Daldry, my old running coach, used to say as we did stomach crunches on a cliff top facing the dawning sun: “Count your blessings!”