Can you survive Retirement?

I know this is a funny question but if you ever plan to retire it is an important one. Not everyone can survive retirement I find. For me, it works because I never really found one career that I liked that much or felt satisfied doing enough not to retire. However, I do like to write as it helps me understand myself and the world better and I like to help people with anything I can. So, I find I am satisfied traveling the world, visiting friends, writing, walking my dogs, skiing, riding my motorcycle, mountain climbing, 4 wheel driving and meeting new people from all over the world. But then, retirement isn't for everyone. But, it works for me.

How long does it take to adjust to retirement. It took me about 5 years to actually adjust to it. At first, I was happy not to have to go to work every day. But, then, after a few months of retirement it felt a lot like I was falling off a cliff and never ever hitting the ground. Whether you like your work or job or not it does give structure of a sort to your life. You have to get up on certain days at certain times so it gives a structure to your life.

Without that structure some of you who are not self disciplined enough are going to start to panic.

But, if you are capable of a high enough level of self discipline or you have owned businesses yourself like I have and still do you understand how to structure your life yourself and you have learned to be very creative about the whole thing.

The easiest way to prepare yourself for retirement is to be an entrepreneur in the first place. Because retirement in it's very nature is a lot like being an entrepreneur for it to be successful for you. The more creative and financially stable you are the more likely you can live with retirement.

The more you need others to tell you what to do with yourself the more likely you cannot survive retirement.

But, for self realized people like myself it takes about 5 years to deal with all the feelings of loss of identity that usually comes with retirement. Also, it helps if you have a partner in life to share your retirement with.

If you have enough money, health, and joy of life, you could theoretically be retired for 50 or more years and be happy enough to keep going.

It's mostly up to you. It's like being a child in school and then taking a never ending summer or winter vacation.

If you can handle a vacation that never ends you might just be okay retired too.

I was forced to retire by a heart virus in September 1998 and I'm still alive and kicking here in 2016. So, if you can survive everything you have already in your life you might just survive retirement too and be happy enough to keep on going through retirement for 50 or more years too.