The shape of your life

The shape of life  - your empty palette

What are your harboured desires ........  - your perceptions of what makes you happy, clarity in this will help you plan your life.

 Is it important to have a soft top sports car? Is it important to have a wine cellar stocked with the very best wines? Is it important to live in a huge and very impressive house, filled with fine art and antiques? .............

                   "The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." Oscar Wilde

.....or are you looking forward to a simpler life? Maybe you have a yearning to explore the world in a campervan? Perhaps you want to explore your potential in a new field - pottery, geneology, writing, DIY? Maybe you have an urge to study again - a new field, exploring the excitement and challenge of University once more.

       "The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we lead." Flora Whittemore

Maybe you haven't actually thought about it - you just want 'out'. As I said earlier, change simply to escape is a big mistake. You need a purpose, a reason, a direction. Basically you need to be able to justify voluntary retirement on the basis that you want a newlife, and you know why you want this even though you may not be clear exactly of all the detail when the decision is made.                                                        

"The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment, it is not in luck or chance or the help of others, it is in yourself alone." Orison Swett Marden

It is important for your state of mind to feel positive about the newlife - as opposed to feeling only a need to escape. 'Escape' may be on your mind, and that is okay so long as you have a set of aims and goals to replace what work gives you. Whatever you think, even the most stressful job is providing you with something which will not be there when you quit : status, camaraderie, focus, pressure, commitment, challenge, purpose. When you leave that job, you may well be glad to leave these and others behind, but failure to replace at least some of them will leave you empty.                                                     

                    "If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable." Seneca

............... and after retirement? when the stage of elderhood creeps ever closer? Is 'old age' to become everything? Will you only do 'old folks things'? ....... or will you stay young except in body?

                    "I want to make a terribly important point. People decide to get old. I've seen them do it. Its as if they've said "Right,that's it,now I'm going to get old." Then they become old. Why do they do this? I don't know."    Doris Lessing (still writing in her nineties)