Whether your retirement date is coming closer or you’re already retired, you might wonder: How do I live my best life after retirement? No need to look further! I have the top 10 tips to help you live your best life in retirement.
1) Live In The Present
You can’t enjoy life when you’re either thinking about the past or worrying about the future. So to live your best life, you need to live in the now and be present.
It doesn’t help you any further when you have thoughts about the past or future. You can’t change it by constantly thinking about it. The only experience you can change is now.
The following exercises and tools will help you get or stay in the present moment.
- You can practice Meditation (use the practical & simple app Headspace), where you focus on your breathing.
- You can do Yoga or Tai Chi. These are peaceful sports that will help you to be more mindful.
- You can go on a mindful nature walk where you try to focus your attention on your feet, hitting the floor, or watch nature’s beauty.
- Exercising is great for the mind and helps you let go of anything that is bothering you. So go for a swim, hike, bike ride, play golf, etc.
- Enjoy a mindful meal. Cook your favorite meal and eat as if every bite is your last. And have no other distractions (TV, Phone, Book, Newspaper)
Paying attention and focusing on your body’s physical sensation will help you get out of your mind and into your body. Of course, your mind will wander off frequently, but you have to be aware of it, notice it and try to refocus again on the present moment. The more you practice being mindful during the day, the easier it becomes.
2) Prioritize Your Health
Your health is your wealth. It’s the most important thing in the world. Because if you’re not healthy, there is no way you can enjoy your retirement.
So when you want to live your best life in retirement, prioritizing your health is key. Make sure you eat healthily, because you are what you eat, so anything you put in your mouth has consequences for your health.
Make an effort to cook your meals. And if you’re not sure how to cook or want to be better at cooking, apply for an online cooking class on Masterclass. You can learn new cooking skills at any time, anywhere at your own pace from the world’s greatest chefs.
Also, exercising regularly, keeping your brain active, and stay socially connected are additional ways to set yourself up for long-term success in retirement.
Especially staying socially active is crucial to living a happy retired life. Many people underestimate the power of having daily social interactions. If you do not expand your social circle after you retire, you can experience loneliness and even depression in retirement.
You can read more about fun ways to stay socially active in my article: 20 Ways To Stay Social After Retirement.
3) Keep Learning New Things
Living your best life in retirement means experiencing new things. Your life doesn’t get excited if you keep doing the same stuff every day. Getting out of your comfort zone frequently is the best strategy for living life to the max in retirement. It’s the place where the magic happens.
That doesn’t mean you have to jump out of an airplane every day. You can get a new retirement hobby or apply for fun classes.
Learning new things is a great way to keep your brain active, stay socially connected, and to make sure you live your best life in retirement. And I think one of the coolest things you can gift yourself is an annual Membership to Masterclass.
It’s a streaming platform that makes it possible for anyone to watch or listen to hundreds of video lessons taught by the most successful and famous teachers in the world.
From Anna Wintour teaches Creativity and Leadership, Steve Martin teaches Comedy, Ron Finley teaches Gardening to Samuel L. Jackson teaches Acting. The platform has so such a variety of lessons on all sorts of topics. And you can learn at your own pace and in your own time. So you have all the freedom in the world and a fun everyday activity.
Get the latest prices and learn about cool online classes on Masterclass here;
4) Have A Routine
Retirement is the time to relax. And having no obligations is the greatest feeling of freedom you can experience. So, I can imagine you don’t want to have a routine in your retirement honeymoon stage.
But after a while, it’s important to have some routine in retirement. Without a routine, you can feel lost, and with a routine, you have something to hold onto. It creates momentum that keeps you on track of living the best life.
You can enjoy relaxation time better when you have been active in other areas that day. I always advise people to replace their work routines with new routines once they retire. It helps them make the most out of your retirement day and not waste time on aimless activities such as watching TV or being on social media many hours.
Try to structure your retirement day and find a nice balance between household activities, leisure, and relaxation time.
5) Set Goals
Without goals, where would your life go?
To move forward in life, you need to set goals.
During your career, you’ve probably always had goals and targets to pursue. Even getting retired was a life goal itself. And after retirement, that doesn’t change. Instead of work-related goals, you now have to come up with new life (leisure) goals. These goals can be either big or small.
Having a goal helps you prioritize your retirement time. Living your best life in retirement means you need to dedicate most of your time doing the things you love to do. And for that, you need to know what your next goal in life is. It’s the reason why you get up every morning.
When you have trouble coming up with a new life goal, you can start small. Start with easy daily goals you can accomplish, and once you get the hang of it, you will figure out what next and bigger goal you want to achieve in retirement.
Check out this article to learn about the importance, benefits, and value of goal setting.
6) Get High-Quality Sleep Each Night
Want to live your best life in retirement during the daytime? Make sure you sleep like a king or queen during the night!
You can only live out your best life when you’re well-rested. And good quality sleep is essential for your body and mind to recover fully and start your day refreshed and energized to do all the things you want.
According to the Sleep Foundation, adults need to sleep 7-8 hours a night. And according to Healthline.com, a lack of sleep can lead to moodiness, depression, weight gain, high blood pressure, diseases, impaired brain activity, and a suppressed immune system.
So a good night’s sleep has a huge impact on your daily life. That’s why one of the best investments you can do for retirement is getting yourself the most comfortable mattress out there: the Puffy Mattress. It’s ranked as the best and most comfortable mattress in America!
You can read the 5-star reviews and ratings and check out the latest prices of Puffy Mattress here.
For you to sleep better you want to make sure it’s quiet at night. Your sleep can be greatly influenced by your partner snoring the whole night. If snoring is a big problem for you or your partner you can get an anti-snoring mouthpiece from VitalSleep that helps you to breathe easily and sleep quietly. It helped over 400,000 snorers get a restful night’s sleep. You can read hundreds of VitalSleep reviews here.
7) Have A Fun Plan For Retirement
Many retirees regret that they didn’t have something to retire to. A lot of people retire without a fun plan for their retirement days.
But retirement planning is so much more than just planning for the financial part. Many people forget to prepare for this new lifestyle, and when reality kicks in, they are often overwhelmed. So to live your best life, you need to know what you want to do in retirement.
And creating a bucket list is a very hands-on and practical tool to write down what you want to do in retirement. In my article 101+ ideas for your retirement bucket list, you can get inspired. And read about how to create your retirement bucket list and not get overwhelmed by all the options and possibilities.
A bucket list should not be just a checklist that you tick off. Your list must contain items with deeper meaning when you want to experience your best life after retirement. You want to feel fulfilled.
Doing something fun brings you pleasure, which is short-lived. Getting fulfillment is something deeper than that, and the feeling will last much longer. It’s an ongoing life journey of self-discovery, growth, and contentment with your position in life. And in my article: How To Get Fulfillment In Retirement, I share 16 helpful tips.
Another great way to figure out what you want to do in retirement is to tiptoe into retirement. When you still need to work for a couple of years, you can take a couple of months off work to practice living your retirement before you officially retire. It allows you to try retirement out for a bit. You can try out new hobbies, interests, classes, travel, and see how you react to this new lifestyle. Perhaps it gives you a new insight into what you like and dislike. Because you can only know if you like something if you did it,
Another way is to work parttime in the last couple of years. So you can slowly transition into retirement. The switch to retired life isn’t that all of a sudden, and you’re more aware of how you want to spend your retirement days once your official retirement day is there.
Read more: 14 Tips: How To Find Your Passion In Retirement
8) Maintain Financial Comfort
You don’t want to worry about money in retirement. It’s time to live stressfree, and that’s why you want to maintain financial comfort in retirement. And that means that you live your retired life in a fulfilling way with the financial recourses you have.
In short, your financial plan needs to align with your fun plan because you don’t want to retire with a head filled with dreams without being able to afford it.
Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case for everyone. A lot of retirees need to earn extra money to make ends meet. Although a retirement job can be a lot of fun, you want to do it for the right reasons. Preferably more for the joy it brings you than instead of the money it pays.
Being financially comfortable gives you a sense of security and a worry-free mind to live the life you want in retirement. So make sure you have enough money for:
- Your monthly basic needs
- Your fun plan
- Emergencies
Check out my Retirement Planning Guide: 12 Steps for more tips about financial retirement planning.
9) Have A Positive Mindset
For sure, you envisioned your retired life. And hopefully, it’s going to be everything that you’ve dreamed it would be.
But life can throw unexpected curve balls. And to live the best life after retirement, you need to be flexible to changes. Adapt to it and create a new way to live your best life in retirement. And that is much easier with a positive attitude because your life is as good as your mindset.
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”
Chase your dreams but also have an open mind that things can work out differently. Have a positive attitude, and you can live your best life in retirement, even when things don’t work out as planned.
Be grateful for what you do have and never let the things you want to make you forget the things you have.
Tips for a positive mindset:
- Start the day with positive affirmation in the mirror. Say something kind to yourself in the mirror every day.
- Focus on the good things even though there are small. And if you caught yourself focusing on something negative. Replace that one thought with at least two positive thoughts.
- Find humor in everything. Even when something bad happens. Find the fun in it to turn the energy around.
- See your failures as lessons. Each time you think you failed, then come up with at least two lessons you can learn from it. The most successful people failed over and over again. The ones that learned from their mistakes are the ones that succeeded.
- Surround yourself with positive people. Your vibe attracts your tribe. With a positive attitude, you attract positive people. Also, with negative people around you, you can’t create a positive mindset.
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10) Enjoy The Simple Things In Life
You can improve your life in a big way when you can enjoy the little things and simple moments in life.
Most of the time, we are focused on the big events in our lives, from birthdays, child-birth, weddings to retirement. We get excited about these events with good reason, of course. But they only take up such a small amount of time in our lives. The vast majority of our lives, small events happen from moment to moment.
When you miss out on enjoying the little things, you miss out on enjoying so much of your life. And when you always want more instead of enjoying the simple things you can lead a very unsatisfying life. It’s often we reminisce about the little moments in our lives instead of the big ones.
“Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you look back and realize they were the big things.”
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