Replying to a commenter guy

Transcript

Shelf Guy asks, what did you do in retirement to keep yourself busy and still feel like you're important in the retirement world? And they mentioned that maybe this isn't even the right question. I think it is the right question early in your retirement and everybody's going to be different. So I'll tell you how I approached it. And a lot of my older videos talk about this stuff as I went through it. So for the first six months to a year, I was kind of like trying to figure out like how to stay busy, how to stay engaged, how to stay like at that same level I was at when I was working. And I do a lot of videos on this where I say I came to a point where I was like, well, why do I want to go back to work so much? And so I made a commitment to myself. I said, I'm not going back to work until I can answer why I want to go. I want to go back to work. And it turns out that there was so many levels of whys. It was like, I want to go back to work because I need to feel busy. Well, why do I need to feel busy? I need to feel busy because when I sit around, I just stress and I'm anxious. Well, why are you stressed and anxious when you're not busy when you're sitting around? Well, I get stressed and anxious because my thoughts sort of tend to turn in. Why do your thoughts turn in on themselves? It's like went on and on and on and on. But it took like a year or two to go through that exercise. So for me, it wasn't about finding ways to keep myself busy. It was about finding ways to understand why I couldn't relax. And once I learned what was keeping me from relaxing, I was then able to not care if I was busy or not. And sort of start leaning into being bored more often, leaning into like doing nothing and being happy doing nothing. Because it's like so many like philosophy say this, but the more you... The more you... The more you satisfy an urge, the greater the urge becomes. And, you know, like in the work world, what that translated to me was work consumed everything. And when there was nothing left to consume, that's when I stopped letting work expand into my world. There was no more expansion to be had. So, you know, if I were to try and replace work in my retirement, whatever I was doing would just continue expanding because satisfying a desire only increases the need for whatever it is you're desiring. So I needed to learn to forsake all those desires for busyness and engagement and excitement and all that and understand like why did I think that was going to make me happy? And what was I calling happy? Like was I even happy? And what does happy really look like? And how do I get there? So I know that was like just a big... big word salad, but I'm just kind of like off the cuff answering the question. This is the short version. I had to learn that staying busy wasn't important. And I had to go through all the stuff you'll go through too to get there. But you're thinking about this stuff. You're not just going back to work. And a lot of people will do that. And I don't fault them for it. There's a sort of a somewhat distant family member of mine who will never reflect on anything. Who will never inspect their thoughts. Who will never be sort of introspective. They're going to work until the end. And that is the best they can do. So I'm never going to fault somebody for doing the best they can do. Some people will just never reflect on their thoughts, their emotions, their decisions. And probably the best thing for them is to work right up until the end. For those of us who are able to, we're fortunate that we can... can reflect on why we think what we think and feel what we feel. There might be something else for us. So good luck with your retirement though. You're on the right track.