Letting Go of Old Routines?

Having trouble letting go of your old routines from all those years of working?

It can be scary to let go of the routines you had for so long. They are ingrained habits and provide comfort in your daily life. But it can be healthy to let some of them go as you move into the next phase of your life and create new routines (or lack of). That’s what detoxing is all about – letting go of the weight of the corporate world and getting used to new routines that will gradually develop as your brain makes the transition to retirement. One old routine I had no trouble giving up was getting up every day at 6:30 AM. 8:00ish works much better for this non-morning person.

Several friends and co-workers who retired ahead of me suggested taking a few months to just exhale – I call that detoxing – and let yourself adjust to being retired. Taking this approach allowed me to slowly adjust to my new life. Everything changes when you are no longer focused on your work schedule and that can create a void. While it’s important to have a purpose in life, it’s also important to give yourself time to clear your head so you can be receptive to the signs that can lead you to that purpose. Allowing yourself to let go of old routines and create new ones that work better now will help to open you up to new possibilities.

It may sound strange to link routines and habits with opening you up to new things, but it is those ingrained routines that can hold you back. And sometimes having overly detailed plans on what you are going to do as soon as you retire can do the same thing. The exception of course is when your post-retirement plan is what drove you to retire early in the first place. I am not in that category, though I did have ideas of things I wanted to pursue once I gave myself time to detox. This blog was nowhere near being on that list and is something that came to me after a few months of relaxing my brain.

For me the adjustments have come in many forms: how I track my calendar and to-do list (I use my phone’s calendar and no longer print each day’s page – a huge adjustment for me as I have been a paper person all my life), when I eat breakfast and what I eat, when I workout, snacks and daytime meal (my body is still adjusting to that change), learning not to check e-mails first thing, and best of all taking the time to thoroughly read the daily local newspaper. The biggest adjustment has been to learn to enjoy doing what I feel like doing when I feel like doing it. Being a creature of habit, I’m still working on being comfortable with that.

I’m not suggesting simply tossing out your lifelong routines and habits. What I am suggesting is taking a look at them to see which ones are still helpful and which ones are either holding you back or causing stress as you adjust to retirement. We all need routines in our daily lives but in this new phase of life, the old ones may not be good for us anymore.