As previously explored, retirement can carry significant emotional strain and risk precipitating unexpected angst and dissatisfaction. This can be countered with a focus on wellness throughout our working lives and an awareness of all that can be experienced and enjoyed during this new stage of life.

Many retirees report that they had put on professional masks throughout their careers, becoming actors on the stage of their work environments. These work personas are often markedly different from the “person inside,” resulting in a state of tension and a loss of contact with one’s self. Retirement allows people to shed their work costumes and rediscover the passions, interests, needs, and desires held at arm’s length for so long. I, for example, found myself writing books and pieces like this.

Throughout our careers, we all become specialists. Hours and hours focused on the same tasks, building the same competencies, and honing the same skills. Great for efficiency, but not so hot for the expansion of our intellectual and emotional selves. With retirement, the world becomes an open book. We can study and immerse ourselves in anything. We are no longer narrowing our perspective but are blowing it wide open. A surgeon friend of mine is studying nuclear physics. Many retirees report that they are so busy pursuing their new interests that they run out of time in their days.

Many of us switch off our emotions at work. A cold, dispassionate approach to the job at hand often improves efficiency, productivity, and outcomes—do you want your surgeon, for example, to get all weepy or uptight in the middle of your operation? But do this enough, and we go numb. And this emotional blunting can bleed into the rest of our lives. Retirement allows us to get back in touch with our emotional selves. To feel things more deeply. To experience life with more color. To cry more, but also to laugh more. Several report an........

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