Replying to a commenter retirement emotional

Transcript

I can't say this is true for other people, but for me, you're spot on. I wouldn't say I would have been an idiot to reenter the workforce, but that's as close a term as I could come up with quickly, meaning it would be ridiculous or silly for me to reenter the workforce at the time when I was thinking about it. The problem I had was, I thought, I can't just sit around. You hear this a lot. You hear people say, I couldn't just sit around. There is so much real estate between dying on your recliner and going out and taking a job. I had to stop and ask myself, why is going out and getting a job my first response to not being sedentary or feeling useless, etc.? I was really fortunate. That thought process entered the equation. I could have easily just taken it as a foregone conclusion that I'm just a person who has to work. I paused, I thought about it, and I thought, why can't I just sit around? That caused me to start unpacking these things. People have asked me in the comments, what did you learn? It's a long, long list. I would have to literally do a 20-part series on it. I'll give you a couple of them. I lack self-esteem. All of my validation and worth comes from exterior sources. As soon as I stopped working, I didn't have that input that was helping me to feel like I had value. What passed from my ego just sagged. Just like a wilting plant. Fortunately, I went through that. I went through that thought process. I started to learn about what was driving my motivation to get back in the workforce. I started working on the things that had been driving me for the last 40 years, basically. I don't regret the time I spent working. I don't regret the impact I had on people, the impact people had on me as a result of me being in the workforce. But I do wish that I could have learned some of these lessons easily. I don't think I could have done it any easier. But that's how it is. Sometimes that's just how we learn. I agree. I would say that people who re-enter the workforce after retiring, there's probably a good set of people that have all the right reasons. It is perfectly healthy for them to do so. For me, you're 100% right. It would have been because of my lack of emotional balance and my lack of understanding of what was driving my behavior. So I really like to be where I am.