Retirement: Discovering Your Personal Dream

I once heard retirement described as: following your dream!  Wouldn’t you like to be able to translate your dream into reality in your retirement? You can if you know what your Ideal Work might be.  Yes, retirement is about getting away from work, but it’s also about getting ‘in touch’ with those activities that give you a sense of fulfillment.  Finding activities that satisfy you personally is a central task for all of us who are either approaching retirement, or already “in retirement”.

Work and Personality

            Everyone has a unique personality.  There are over 7.3 billion people who live on this earth, and no two of them are identical.  Your personality shines brighter when you’re with certain people, in certain settings, and in certain kinds of activities.  The more aware you are of your personality the better you’ll be able to select activities in your retirement that bring you the most satisfaction.

            The esteemed career developmentalist John Holland devised a simple yet quite effective framework of six personalities that provide us with a good starting point for identifying the kinds of activities that might bring us the most satisfaction.

1. The REALISTIC Personality Type: People who like to move their body in their work activities.  They like the manual skilled jobs; they like being athletic.  They prefer to work with objects, machines, tools, plants, or animals; they generally prefer the outdoors 

2. The CONVENTIONAL Personality Type: People who like to work with data, and/or have clerical numerical ability.  They like carrying things out in detail or following through on other’s instructions.  They tend to like guidelines and specific operating procedures.  They even read directions! 

3. The ENTERPRISING Personality Type: People who like to work with other people, especially in influencing them, persuading them, and leading or managing them to reach goals for personal or economic gain.
   
   
4. The SOCIAL Personality Type: People who like to work with other people informing them, enlightening them, helping them, training them, developing them, healing or curing them.  They are generally quite skilled with words … they can describe things very well.
   
   
5. The ARTISTIC Personality Type: People who have artistic, innovating, or intuitional preferences.   They like to work in unstructured situations, using their imagination or creativity.
   
   
6. The INVESTIGATIVE Personality Type: People who like to find things out, discover things, analyze things, evaluate data, and solve problems.

 My book “Creating a Successful Retirement: Finding Peace and Purpose and the Johnson Institute self-study Course 103 “Retirement as a Spiritual Journey” expand on the above and more importantly give you a tried and true guide to making your retirement a truly special time.  Also….taking Course 103 equips you to give the course as a series a workshop, a retreat or as a course.  Who knows, becoming a retirement facilitator may be a big part of your retirement lifestyle.

Until next time … stay light and be bright.

Richard P. Johnson, PhD