LIFE AFTER 30 YEARS WITH THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
By COACHLYON – THE Pre-Retirement Coach

What would you think about a one month vacation in Costa Rica to celebrate, and kick off, your new life in retirement? Then come back and do what you absolutely LOVE to make the supplemental income you want to keep up your lifestyle? Well, that’s the plan we came up with for Alice. She was coming up on her retirement from 30+ years with the State of California, and seemed to be getting anxious every time she started to think about it. She had been to quite a few retirement parties for friends who worked in state service, and she seemed to be excited for them, but when she thought about her own “Retirement”, an uneasy feeling crept in. After talking about it, she realized that she really didn’t know what she was going to do after she left working at the Department of Health Services where she was a well respected supervisor. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was thinking: What will I do when I don’t have work to go into? Who will I be when I’m not Alice King, DHS Information Systems Supervisor? When will I be able to see my friends at DHS? Will they still want to be with me? Yet, she couldn’t put words on these questions -- she just was very anxious about retiring! She was SCARED! So, we encouraged her to think about “life after DHS”. When asked what she loved to do, the words nearly flew out of her mouth, “Decorating and Gardening”! Indeed, she was very good at interior and exterior decorating, ... and she loved it. So we talked about her having a small business where she got to do that. Also, she was doing a re-fi on her house, and the bank had sent a “mobile notary” to the house with the papers to sign. She talked with the notary, and liked the idea of perhaps doing that for extra money as well. Alice declared that she wanted her first 6 months as “Do Nothing” time – her well deserved rest after a distinguished career. She really wanted to travel, so we came up with a month long trip to Costa Rica as her “reward”, and as a fun transition from her “JOB” life to her life in “RETIREMENT”. She even put up a calendar for her to tick off the days ‘til her retirement,... and the departure for Costa Rica.

So, even if she did not go into the decorating, or the mobile notary business, she had now handled the fear around “what am I going to do? and how am I going to supplement my pension income?” Also, she had something tangible to look forward to as her reward for all her years of service. This was a good start, and she admitted that she was no longer feeling that anxious about retirement, and that it was now easier to go in to work.

Richard A. Lyon, CEC, aka COACHLYON - THE Pre-Retirement Coach, is a “Baby Boomer”, and works mainly with his fellow “Boomers”. As a practicing Life Coach here in Sacramento for over 4 years, besides Pre-retirement planning, he has worked with clients on various challenges including writing and publishing a book, successful internet dating, career changes, and enhancing spiritual awareness.