What a valuable service! Why? It is life-enriching, a re-orientation from the myths of our society, providing concepts that open you to the riches of a rewarding, satisfying, full life. You are provided with the opportunity to decide on a new course, leading you to a new business or a career or you may choose to remain in the same profession with a whole new perspective.

Counseling at this time of life is much like high school career counseling except for our cultures message that retirement is a time of contraction, withdrawal and the slide down the slippery slope to death.

This makes it much more difficult for the retiree to remain active or increase their activity and lifestyle. Families support their teenager, but not the person who is retiring to venture forth into new careers and ventures involving risk.

A common myth to guard against is that successful retirement living means retirees are no longer challenged. This often leads to a purposeless life where retirees experience depression. We treat the depressed person by getting them more active.

There are two questions we would ask. The first: What do you plan for the next 5 years? We would hope to hear plans for growth: intellectual and/or skill development, or using existing skills in new ways. We would love to help the person become more aware of things they want to do and skills not yet developed. We would assist in uncovering talents and gifts not yet expressed and help create an eagerness to develop them.

Next, we would proceed to a discussion of how to mobilize a plan to develop these areas. Once you decide you have more to contribute, more to express, your excitement leads naturally into action; searching out sources, developing a map of strategies.

Financial resources need to be discussed for when financial aspects have been attended to, new avenues open for self-exploration and self-actualization.

Thats the joy in retirement: exploring and expressing what external demands have inhibited. It becomes a time to capture this opportunity to live a fuller life that you imagined.

Unlike high school graduation, you have an incredible plethora of skills and successful experiences. You have never been better equipped!

The second question is: How much time have you and your partner spent together alone without others? We hope you work through the adjustment in how to allow each other space and develop successful ways to communicate your personal needs to each other. Living together with the different dynamics that retirement offer: schedule changes, changed social contacts, possibility of different roles, and male-female differences to change can overwhelm couples.

True successful living means expanding and enjoying new experiences. Use retirement to test new ideas, engage in activities that you havent had the opportunity to do before. Thrill your marriage with a deeper intimacy by sharing the different and new needs of retirement. Make this time of life called retirement the most fulfilling and satisfying yet.