Loretta arrived at our coaching session with a frustration she couldn’t quite explain. A few months after leaving a stressful job in nonprofit leadership, she was enjoying longer dinners with her husband, playdates with her granddaughter, and occasional consulting projects that kept her engaged in her passion for education. And yet, every morning she woke with the same nagging guilt. She’d linger over coffee and puzzles, look up, and find it was nearly noon. That familiar inner voice would chime in, right on cue: You’re being lazy. You should be more productive.
Loretta’s inner voice is something I hear from other people in the early stages of retirement: Am I doing this right? What am I supposed to be doing, exactly? I’m stuck!
Why Retirement Can Feel Unexpectedly Difficult
You may be saying to yourself, Loretta just needs to analyze the problem, make a list, and create a plan. She tried those approaches, only to find herself circling the same questions. What’s interesting about being stuck in retirement is that more effortful thinking can keep us locked in place, running in the same thought loops, only faster.
When we’re wrestling with a problem in our heads with high-alert, directed attention, our brains work hard to filter information, leading to exhaustion and the same tired answers. Retirement often presents challenges that cannot be solved in the same ways we solved problems during our working years.
What Nature Can Teach Us About Retirement
Research on nature and creativity shows us another way in. Walking in the woods or observing the ripples of a lake invites a softer, more spontaneous kind of attention, one that stimulates the brain without the same draining quality. A study of Danish creative professionals revealed that exposure to nature increased their curiosity and willingness to explore, made them more open to new and different ideas, and encouraged flexibility in their thinking.
In essence, the natural world offers our cognitive processes a rest, allowing for surprises, new connections, and associations that lie beneath our conscious efforts. For many people navigating retirement, this pause can create space to rediscover purpose and possibility.
A Rock, a Flower, and a New Perspective on Retirement
And that’s the direction Loretta decided to take using an exercise I offer called Writing Toward Wisdom. This practice invites clients to explore a challenge through natural objects, various perspectives, and free writing.
Loretta started with a large black rock and immediately recognized herself in it. That guilt every morning felt heavy, dark, and hard to move. As she began to free write from that perspective, she began to realize that her guilt wasn’t really about her slow mornings. It was about an old belief from decades of long, demanding days: mornings had to be optimized, and if she wasted her time, she would have little chance at being productive.
As she continued to write and observe the rock more closely, she noticed it had been cut in half. On the inside, it had an unusually beautiful texture. What’s really going on down there? she wondered. And in that moment, her frustration began to transform into curiosity.
For the second round of free writing, I prompted Loretta to choose a different object and continue writing about her challenge using this new muse. She picked up a small pink flower. The word that came to her was hopeful, along with the question, What if I just listened every morning to my heart and gut?
As she let her pen float over the paper, she realized that she could let go of the old script from her working days and ask: What would meaningful and productive mornings look like now, on my terms?
Finding Wisdom and Purpose in Retirement
What I love about Loretta’s story, and the research, is that neither a rock nor a walk in the woods gives you something new. What the natural world can provide is a rest from all the problem solving, and more immediate access to wisdom you already have.
When you step outside of your usual way of thinking, you’re offered insightful gifts: a break from an old belief. The spark of a new idea. A surprising connection that hadn’t occurred to you before. A voice that hasn’t had room to speak while you were busy building a career.
Those gifts may not come by problem solving, but by reflecting with a rock, a flower, and a little time to listen.
Explore Retirement with Writing Toward Wisdom
Join me for an upcoming Writing Toward Wisdom workshop, where we’ll put analysis and strategizing to the side. It’ll be you, a set of natural objects, some pens and paper. And you don’t have to be a writer or a creative, just a curious human ready to uncover different perspectives within.
Retirement is not simply the end of a career. It is an invitation to explore who you are becoming. Sometimes the next chapter begins not with answers, but with curiosity.
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