Until now, you thought panic attacks were reserved for expectant parents in the OB/GYN room or prima donnas making their stage debuts. Sudden breakouts of sweat were the domain of diving Olympians as they viewed its ominous 1,000-foot cliff, or tweens confronting the dad on their first date. Stomach sinking sensations were felt in the terrifying moments when those dreaded sirens screeched and swirling blue lights flashed, pointed directly at you on a Friday afternoon as you drove home from work.

But now you know otherwise. The long-awaited Wednesday afternoon arrives for the retirement party in your honor. And you walk into what is supposed to be the best first day of the rest of your life. Thursday morning you enjoy a brunch in bed, then tuck into a lunch with two martinis and take advantage of one of those 4:00 pm dinners with a special senior discount. You go from one late-night talk show to another, never thinking of a bedtime curfew to prepare for the jolt of your dreaded 6am alarm clock.

But then, to your pain and surprise, it’s only next Monday morning and you’re already experiencing a trifecta of panic attack, sweats, and a sunken stomach. What is happening? So it’s been a month or more since that fateful “retirement day” and it’s still not happening, whatever it is! By now, the honeymoon is over and you feel increasingly rudderless, redundant, non-essential, inconsequential, irrelevant. You seem to have lost your balance. Your balance has gone south. Even your voice seems to have become less imposing!

Do not imagine for a minute that you are unique in the whole world. Thousands of colleagues (in fact, more than 10,000 daily) are joining its ranks, experiencing its anxiety, and dealing with the ups and downs of retirement life. Let’s examine the sources of their apprehension (and yours).

First, whether you realize it or not, for more than 30 years, your professional personality has been inextricably linked to your job, your career, your job. Perhaps even more than your family structure, your work defined who you were, gave meaning and purpose to your daily life, provided you with a modicum of power and prestige. Whether you were forced to give up that role or that thing freely in order to leave, you could not, in any way, have anticipated the psychological jolt caused by your push or decision to leave.

Second, unless you’re independently wealthy, you suddenly realize that what has been a fairly lucrative and reliable twice-weekly autodeposited paycheck is no more. The tap has run out, only to be replaced, in many cases, by a less substantial monthly retirement benefit. Right now, you’re too panic-stricken to calmly step back and realistically evaluate other sources of additional income, like your 401K, social security benefits, investments, or real estate.

Then there’s the whole social thing: the daily chatter, gossip, and camaraderie that fostered lifelong, or at least fleeting, friendships. He never anticipated loneliness and lack of daily companionship as byproducts of his decision to retire. With whom can you now compete for fashion supremacy, for supervisor approval, for promotion? It never occurred to him until now that he would no longer be included in the office lottery, the Friday afternoon meeting at the local favorite cafe or bar, or the Saturday morning golf game.

It’s time to put down the breathalyzer, the tranquilizers, the hot and cold towels, the Tums. The thousands of colleagues and peers who have gone before you and who are currently experiencing their own ambivalence and anxiety can assure you that help is on the way. If you’re willing to spend the time, effort, and energy, you’ll discover multiple resources outlining the strategies and successes these others have implemented and experienced as they transition to what we truly believe will be the best, most productive, and shamelessly nice phase. of your life.

Three keys are:

1. Take as much time to design and prepare for your retirement life and work as you did to select your main career. Explore the seven pathways to retirement, individually and in combination:

• leisure life
• life as a volunteer
• travel life
• Attractive new job life
• life as an entrepreneur
• Life as a “Creative”
• life as a student

2. Acknowledge and discover your unique self, and give this oneself precedence in what you think and make not thing to take on.
3. Understand that you have years of value left to contribute… but his path.