This is not your father’s future.

I recently had a discussion about retirement and I was shocked at how many people still held old attitudes about the nature of work and retirement. I’m sure you have heard it before or may be guilty of saying it yourself. “I can’t wait till I retire, so I can do what I really love.” But have you ever thought does an artist ever think of retiring? Does he ever say “I can’t wait till I don’t have to paint another canvas?” Does a singer wish for the day that she doesn’t have to sing another note? My point is, when you find something you love doing; there is no such thing as work or retiring. The key is to find what you love doing.

What a miserable life to spend it doing what you hate and hoping for the day to stop doing what you hate doing. It is more fulfilling to fill your time with finding and doing what you love. That type of life is not filled with the current concept of work, hoping for retirement but filled with productive activity in doing what you love.

How do you get there? Begin with the end in mind. First decide what truly makes you happy. More easily said then discovered. The true is, this simply self revelation may be buried under layers of others expectations including your own. It is blocked by false gratifying wants and desires. Finding what you love is a journey in itself but one well worth it.

The next question is usually “How will I live if I don’t work”. The answer lies in how you look at the question. The approach you take is that work is no longer work but enjoyable productive activity and productive activity inevitable leads to productive results. Do what you love doing and the money will follow. It has been show time and time again that when a person lets go of the need and the desire to only just make money and focuses more on fulfilling their passion, value is often found by others in what is a passion to that person. Sometimes this value is a lot sometime it’s a little but in almost every case it is more than enough to sustain that person’s daily needs.

Turning your work into an enjoyable productive activity eliminates the need for retirement. There then is no need to wait for retirement to do what you love and in turn there is no end to doing what you love doing. Work is no longer a means to an end but an extension of you and what you love doing that has no end.

Terrence Pharos