The Baby Boomers Retirement: A New Definition for an Old Word

What are your retirement goals and dreams? The baby boomers retirement will be different from former generations. It still to be determined whether it will better or worse.

Do you want to have a happy retirement? Of course, you do.

Do you want to have a retirement different from your parents? If you are a baby boomer, you most likely want to chart a course different from your parents.

What are your retirement goals and dreams? In a website visited by thousands of people above the age of fifty, the overwhelming number one goal was, (drum roll, please) to lose weight. To lose weight? That’s not a dream or even a very good goal. That’s purgatory.

In the book, It’s Only Too Late If You Don’t Start Now, author Barbara Sher wrote, “Why is it when midlifers talk of fulfilling their lifelong dreams before they’re too old to do them, they’re never talking about dreams like publishing a book or singing at the Met.”

Researchers had long held that human development ceased with adulthood. Who you had become was who you were going to be the rest of your life. The concept of retirement fell into that old model.

One definition of retire is to withdraw. Originally, retirement was intended to remove older workers form their jobs.

The idea of retirement as a time to play emerged in the early 1960’s as a marketing tactic from the housing and insurance industries. While this new vision of retirement was better than the old one of sitting on a rocking chair waiting to die, the golden years were still a gilded prison. Retirees were sent off to Sun City to play golf and bridge, but still removed from society.

During the last thirty years, psychologists have reached a new conclusion that aging isn’t necessarily a time of decline, physically, mentally, and spiritually, but an opportunity for growth. In order for this growth to occur, a reorientation must take place within the individual.

If you’re retired or thinking about it in the near future, check out your attitude and beliefs about aging. What are your expectations about getting older? Are you excited or dreading this phase of your life? What are your reactions to the following words and phrases: senior citizen, the golden years, elderly, retirees?

Do you believe the best years of you life are over? Do you believe you still have the opportunity to create new dreams, push outside your comfort zone? Are you prepared to jump off the edge of the cliff and build your wings on the way down?

The baby boomers retirement will be different from their parents’ generation. Whether it will be better or worse will depend on how they define themselves and that word.