Transitioning from a professional career into retirement is a significant life transition and comes with specific challenges.
My newsletter, ‘Retirement Success Strategies,’ aims to help you find the resources you need to create the life you want.
I share proven strategies, actionable tools and expert tips that help you leverage your professional skills and mindset to take decisive action – towards an impactful retirement life, a life you truly enjoy and love.
Start reading:
#1 – Overcome Retirement Uncertainty
The first issue of the newsletter is designed to help readers uncover and better understand their current beliefs and concerns about retirement. The article presents an awareness exercise detailing common challenges professionals face as the transition into retirement, such as the loss of professional identity, fear of losing relevance, and social disconnection, along with suggestions for navigating them.
#2 – Benefit from Planning and Preparation
Intentional planning and preparation are essential success factors that significantly reduce retirement uncertainty, stress, and anxiety. The article explores two main categories of benefits: practical advantages (e.g., financial readiness, lifestyle clarity, housing decisions) and positive impacts on mindset and emotional well-being (e.g., feeling in control, maintaining a sense of purpose).
#3 – Explore key topics of your life
To design a meaningful retirement life, clarity is needed regarding where one is now and where one wants to go. The article suggests scheduling a series of self-meetings to explore nine essential life topics: Identity, Purpose, Mindset, Relationships, Health, Finances, Personal Development, Engagement, Home and Lifestyle. Example questions help explore each topic.
#4 – Develop clarity, goals, action steps
This article introduces the straightforward ADA Framework (Awareness, Decision, Action) as a tool to solve problems, make changes, and create a personal strategy for a successful transition into retirement. Step 1 (Awareness) involves building a clear understanding of the starting point, Step 2 (Decision) requires setting priorities and choosing goals, and Step 3 (Action) means taking intentional steps and staying adaptable. A case study shows the effectiveness of applying the ADA Framework.
#5 – Build a life-changing new habit
This article focuses on identifying a single, life-changing habit, drawing inspiration from a question posed by James Clear. It provides a list of example daily habits such as daily movement, morning reflection, and daily small-scale decluttering, along with their positive impacts (e.g., maintaining health, strengthening mindfulness, and nurturing relationships. An exercise is provided to help the reader find their “super habit” by focusing on areas of dissatisfaction.
#6 – Focus on the right type of purpose
This article addresses “Purpose Anxiety,” the stress or sadness arising from trying to find a single, grand purpose in retirement. Drawing on Jordan Grumet’s article ‘The Purpose Paradox’, the concept differentiates between Big-P Purpose (grand aspirations like writing a bestseller) and little-p purpose (small, meaningful, everyday activities like volunteering or learning a new skill). Retirement offers a chance to shift focus to little-p purpose, where meaning comes from engagement in the process rather than chasing a specific outcome.
#7 – Declutter your home – for space in your new life
A major decluttering project is crucial for preparing for retirement, regardless of whether the reader plans to downsize or stay in their current home. The three primary reasons for decluttering are: Understanding what they currently have in their life helps the reader decide what they want in the future; identifying values and priorities; and letting go of the past to create physical space and mental clarity for the future.
#8 – Find balance: The ABCs of meaning
The ABCs of Meaning framework, sourced from Bruce Feiler’s book Life Is in the Transitions, is offered as a tool to find balance and meaning during the transition into retirement, described as a “lifequake”. The three components are Agency (autonomy, freedom, creativity), Belonging (relationships, community, family), and Cause (a mission or commitment beyond oneself). The retirement journey is an opportunity to redefine and rebalance these ABCs to suit evolving needs.
This article adapts the concept of ‘Odyssey Planning’ from the book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans as a powerful tool for designing a fulfilling retirement. The central idea is that there is no single “correct” path, so the reader should generate multiple good life plans rather than trying to find the one perfect plan. The article helps the reader create and evaluate three different life plans.
This newsletter shares details about an interview between Margot Krekeler from Let Go – Move On and financial planner Simon Shepherd from Providence Advisory Group. The discussion focused on the process and numerous benefits of decluttering and organising, particularly in the context of retirement preparation, and also touched upon Shepherd’s financial planning expertise.
#10 – Declutter your life – to gain clarity
A 6-Phase Progression Guide is offered as a tool to help the reader navigate decluttering and redefining their life step-by-step, ensuring they don’t feel overwhelmed. The phases move from simple, practical tasks like decluttering kitchen gadgets to dealing with sentimental belongings, before moving on to reviewing daily routines, reorganising social connections, and finally, designing a life vision. By the end of this journey, the reader will have a clearer sense of their identity and future retirement goals.
#11 – Embrace grief – as a compass
Grief is presented as a natural response to the perceived loss of a professional role and its associated values, serving as a compass to guide the reader toward an intentional retirement. The article recommends using the ADA Approach (Awareness, Decision, Action) to navigate this transition. Awareness involves journaling about what was valued in work; Decision means prioritising those values for the future; and Action entails creating a concrete, manageable plan.
#12 – Benefit from daily routines
Building key daily habits is important in retirement to maintain structure, stay organised, and gain a sense of purpose after leaving the routine of work. Six powerful organising habits are suggested, including starting the day with a quick tidy-up for mental clarity, prioritising a short to-do list, and establishing a regular paperwork routine. Other key habits involve decluttering one small space weekly, regularly reviewing routines, and ending the day with gratitude to recognise progress
#13 – Evaluate your life regularly
This article suggests asking specific, powerful questions, sourced from Brooke Castillo’s The Life Coach School Podcast, to enhance self-awareness and make intentional life decisions by creating a sense of urgency. The questions ask what the reader would stop doing, start doing, no longer care about, and care more about if they only had one year left to live. Answering them helps uncover core values and limiting beliefs that impact priorities.
#14 – Focus on Growing and Giving
This newsletter is a verbatim copy of an article by retirement expert Bec Wilson, which asserts that purpose must be brought into retirement, not found there. The core concept of purpose, distilled by American expert Richard Leider, is the “2 Gs”: “Growing and giving”. Research confirms that a strong sense of purpose leads to better health, longer life, and a smoother transition into retirement.
#15 – Choose a healthspan goal
The article suggests shifting focus from increasing lifespan (total years lived) to maximising healthspan (the part of those years lived well enough to enjoy life and do what matters). Setting a healthspan goal shifts thinking toward proactive wellness, benefiting both the present and future self. The article provides a 5-step exercise to choose and tackle a personal healthspan goal.
#16 – Answer the ‘Who am I?’ question
Understanding one’s core personal qualities is essential for making intentional decisions and living with purpose during retirement. The “Who am I?” exercise involves a 5-step decluttering process to narrow a list of 50 personal qualities down to the five most defining and inspiring ones. This rigorous sorting process helps choose the five qualities to focus on practising intensively and applying in all areas of their life.
#17 – Answer 3 longevity questions
This article applies Dr Joe Coughlin’s concept of “longevity thinking” as a powerful future-planning tool for retirement, anticipating an era where individuals live and work significantly longer. The three key questions are: What problems do you love solving? How will you keep learning throughout your life? How do you want to invest your time?
#18 – Use the power of a second goal
To strengthen motivation and willpower when pursuing a goal, the article suggests attaching a “second desirable outcome” to the original goal. For example, volunteering gives a sense of purpose (original goal) while also building new friendships (additional goal). Linking these additional, meaningful benefits to a goal helps boost motivation and resilience when challenges arise.
#19 – Explore new passions – with ease
To make exploring new interests easier and less overwhelming, this article adapts Tiago Forte’s 4-stage system for learning. The system includes a Step 0 to pick a genuinely interesting topic, followed by: Step 1 (Get curious, absorbing content), Step 2 (Try it out with a small project), Step 3 (Learn from a trusted teacher), and Step 4 (Connect with others).
#20 – Know your compelling reason
The success of any large retirement project, such as downsizing, depends directly on the strength of the “compelling reason” or “why”. A strong “why” fuels resilience, solidifies commitment, and helps overcome fear and doubt when facing massive tasks like sorting and decluttering. The article provides a six-step guide for applying this concept to downsizing.
#21 – Experiment with a ‘soft’ retirement approach
The concept of “soft retirement,” based on Andrew Middleton’s approach, suggests viewing retirement not as a “hard stop” but as a flexible phase defined by continued contribution, redefining work as joy, and prioritising connection and meaning. The article compiles eight practical strategies derived from Middleton’s work, such as Test-Driving new roles and Building a “Portfolio Life”.
#22 – Create and use a TO-BE list
Retirement offers the freedom to shift focus from doing (tasks managed by a to-do list) to being (the qualities and states of being one wants to embody). The article uses the ADA approach (Awareness, Decisions, Actions) to create a to-be list: Awareness identifies the desired kind of person (e.g., connected, calm); Decisions turn these into “I am” or “I want to be” statements; and Actions pair these intentions with small, consistent, supportive activities (to-dos).
#23 – Simplify your life – with the VIP Directory
The Very Important Paperwork (VIP) Directory is presented as the core solution for simplifying life by optimising paperwork management and serving as a central, safe collection point for essential personal data. It is crucial for daily tasks, but also acts as a reliable legacy guide for loved ones in emergencies. The article summarises key features of the VIP Directory, noting that its structure must be uniquely tailored to the individual’s life areas and needs.
This article discusses the emotional complexity of retirement, drawing on grief coaching training to explain that it is normal to experience mixed emotions—feeling both excited about the new chapter and sad for the loss of old routines, roles, and relationships. The key to staying grounded is accepting that “both can be true at the same time” and not fighting uncomfortable feelings.
Resilience—the ability to keep moving forward despite obstacles—is vital for achieving retirement goals like learning a new skill or decluttering a space. The article outlines five steps to build resilience: defining a strong “why”; clearing mental roadblocks; planning for moments you want to quit; stepping into discomfort; and turning challenges into growth. Case studies illustrate how to apply these steps.
#26 – Benefit from Positive Psychology
The PERMA Framework, developed by Martin Seligman is presented as a powerful strategy for building a fulfilling and successful retirement by focusing on five pillars of wellbeing. These pillars are Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships , Meaning, and Accomplishment. The article includes a little exercise that helps explore the 5 pillars, and then act.
#27 – Apply the 50-50 principle in your relationships
The core concept, learned from Brooke Castillo’s The Life Coach School Podcast, is that life is 50-50, meaning it is always a mix of positive and negative experiences, and people are a blend of strengths and flaws. Embracing this duality brings freedom and allows for richer, more authentic relationships by stopping the exhausting search for “perfect” and replacing judgment with compassion. The ADA framework is recommended to help apply this 50-50 mindset shift to relationships
Newsletter #28 – is coming soon