Hi,

My name is Gustavo, but you can call me just Gus. 

This is our first post, it is related to that stage in our working life that we always saw so far away, and at the same time were looking forward to it. We dreamedabout living in paradisiac islands, sipping piñas coladas and daiquiris under coconut trees, or hopping from islands to islands in cruise ships, mingling with the local dwellers, this for the rest of our life.

Finally, that long awaited day arrives and we are so excited that we don’t know where to start. Days go by and, for many of us (statistics show well above 50% of retirees), we spend endless time at the beaches around the world sipping piña colada, cuba libre, hop from cruise ship to cruise ship, get to know each street in Barcelona and Amsterdam; however, at some point not too far away from our retirement day, we start having a feeling that something is missing, that work was not that bad after all, we start feeling down and farther down and farther down until depression hits us.

I will tell you a story which is from real life, in fact it happened to a Project Manager of one of our projects in the O&G industry. It happens that he thought he was tired of working from project to project, so he was counting down the days for retirement, he is Dutch, so as a good Dutch, he has a sail boat and as part of his retirement plan he was going to travel from The Netherlands into the mediterranean sea and visit all those wonderful countries, cities, islands in the European and African side of the mediterranean. As as good Project Manager the plan was implemented and started his epic journey, he passed by France, Portugal, Gibraltar´s rock into the mediterranean and visit Spain, France again, Italy and ……. and then decided to turn the sail boat back to The Netherlands because he has gotten fed up of sailing the whole day having no purpose in life. Guess what, he reincorporated to work in O&G projects again. I am not advocating that we need to resume working again, though you may very well do it, but there are actions that can be done to happily replace working from 9 to 5 into something more meaningful, if working is not your cup of tea any more.

Does that picture rings a bell?, can you see yourself there?. If so, you are not alone, retirement is even a prominent cause of depression. This blog has the intention of a) Making people aware of what retirement life may be like if you have not planned for it well, in order to satisfy your needs, b) How we can eliminate, conceptually, the negative behaviors and incorporate the positive ones in order to strive for more fulfilling and rewarding life for the remaining of our life, c) Display my journey trying to reach a meaningful, fulfilling life as a retiree, so it may open your mind to the existing possibilities.

My Story

We also have been in that same boat. My story is the same as yours and as the one of millions of retirees who are found facing a situation they could only dream of, but never really knowing what it felt like. In reality, I am not quite there yet as far as retirement age. I used to work  as an Engineer in the Oil & Gas Industry, especifically in the design and construction of Oil and Gas plants. By March 2020, I went back to Kazakhstan, I was working there happily when suddenly COVID-19 became a big issue and all expats were demobilised before any of us could get the virus, given priority to those older than 50 years, I was in that group, and we were supposed to work from our homes.

At the beginning it was like that, it went for 1 month; then the project decided to replace most expats with locals as part of a nationalization-of-positions program; my position was part of it. To add insult to injury, COVID had impacted the world economies, in turn affecting the oil and gas world demand, therefore oil and gas projects around the world were paralized or frozen; thus, finding another project would be and has been mission impossible.

So, please do not get discouraged, what you are going through at this moment is being lived by millions of people at this very moment. The braves, the resilients, the hopefuls will prevail, will succeed in reaching a bountyful life; whereas the weak ones will have hard times.

What can be done?

Now, there is hope for those of you who feel discouraged; in order to succeed, we will require first to understand what is really happening in our life, in our mind; what keeps us from enjoying our well deserved retirement. Once we know the malady; we will be able to embark in a journey to get well. In a general way, we will borrow from Sidharta Gautama´s approach to fixing suffering (or better to say unsatisfactoriness or discomfort) to parallel the retiree´s plights and frame our blog; he did that through what is known as “The four noble truth”, they are the following:

1. There is suffering in life, where suffering can be any kind of discomfort a person is facing, not only mental and physical pain.
2. There is cause for the suffering
3. Suffering can be remediated.
4. There is a specific path to remediate suffering. In Gautama´s case it was “The noble eigthfold path”.

As we said, we can apply it to the retiree´s life, for those who are having problems facing retirement. We can say the following:

1. There is suffering, unsatisfactoriness or suffering in the retiree, the symptoms or manifestations of this unsatisfactoriness may be depression, anxiety, sadness, anger, fear, or any other negative feeling .
2. There is a cause for any of those symptoms stated above, such as loss of self-esteem, loss of purpose, lack of motivation, loss of income, financial situation, etc..
3. The unsatisfactoriness. thus the symptoms, can be removed by eliminating the causes, that is loss of self-esteem, loss of purpose, lack of motivation, loss of income, financial situation, etc. can be removed from the retiree´s life.
4. There is a way or a specific model to be implemented to minimize the retiree´s suffering during his/her retirement life. The model to be used is based on Maslow´s hierarchy of needs.

After understanding Maslow´s model, like a good traveler, in order to remove from our life the causes of our negative feelings, we will come up with some goals for our life, that is, some purpose for our life, motivation which will make us get up eagerly from our beds at the break of each day; followed by a plan of suitable steps, directions or actions carried out passionately in order to reach our goals; continuing with implementation of these actions, whose progress will be followed closely in order to a) Correct our course of actions, or b) Revise our plans due to re-assessment of our goals and values.

As everything in life worthwhile striving for, this journey will not be a piece of cake and the goals are not self achieved; it will require courage and perseverance, however with the right motivation and support from our family and friends, I am sure that you will be able to live a retirement life full of achievements, enjoyment, peace of mind and happiness; which will allow you to have the biggest achievement of all, that is, sef-realization.

Next Post will be published on 15-May-2021 and it is Titled: “My mind is spiralling down … What is really happening in my retirement?” Post #2: What is really happening

This post will show us what science is saying, through mostly peer-reviewed researches, what is happening in the retiree´s mind.

Quote of the day: This is one of my favorite quotes.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill

I hope you enjoyed this episode, and see you next time