After Retirement: Psychological Considerations

After Retirement: Psychological Considerations [1]

What does Retirement mean:

·   Does not always mean complete withdrawal from work environment

·   Some seniors have bridge jobs the holds between ending their primary employment and final retirement

·   Bridge jobs are associated with both retirement and overall life satisfaction.

Stability and Change of Personality:

·   For instance, if your are a hostile person you are unlikely to mellow much with age

·   The same is true for optimistic

Personality Traits contribute to Health and Longevity.

·   Personality is a strong predictor of emotionality and subjective well-being

·   Negative emotions tend to decrease with age

·   Positive emotions tend to remain stable; possibly because as we age we tend to seek activities and people that give us emotional gratification.

Ego Integrity Vesus Despair

·   Is a state we reach after taking care of things and people, Products and ideas, and having adapted to successes and failures of existence

·   Ego integrity: a sense of having integrated one’s life.

·   Perceiving the dignity of our style of life and defending it from potential threat.

Wisdom

·   Is the virtue that develops; informend and detatched concern with life itself in the face of approaching death

·   Physical and mental activity slows down

·   Simple wisdom maintains and conveys the integrity that accumulated experience of previours years.

Coping

·   Adaptive thinking or behaviour aimed at receiving or reducing stress that rises from harmful , threatening or challenging conditions .

Religion and Meditation

·   ‘There is a positive link between religion or spirituality and health,  marriage satisfaction, psychological well-being, and physical health.

·   Meditation is also a useful connector to physical and mental health.

Three Main Components of Successful Aging

·   Avoidance of disease and or disease related disability

·   Maintenance of high physical and cognitive functioning

·   Sustained active engagement in social and productive activities.

More about Personal Relationships

·   We tend to spend less time with others as we age

·   Relationships that we don maintain are important for our well- being

Social Contact Seems to Prolong Life

·   53% of men who are socially isolated die from cardiovascular disease and more than twice as like to die from accidents or suicide (compared to men who are not isolated

·   Large social networks and frequent social contacts also are connected with less cognitive decline.

Intimate Relationships

·   Marital satisfaction influences overall health

·   Being married itself is important for man; women’s health is more related to the quality of their marriage

·   Friendships are also very important for overall health.

---

[1] One of my Power Point Presentations