Ever wonder why your days are repeatedly spent doing stuff that doesn’t bring you pleasure or a sense of accomplishment and wonder why this isn’t changing? There are three basic reasons for this.
The first is that people are run by habits, and habits form easily and stick tenaciously. One reason for this is that habits allow us, on a small scale, to predict the future. We do a particular action and we expect, and usually get, a particular result, and when we do, we get a feeling of “safeness”; that all is right in the world. For example, we play a game of Solitaire and, win or lose, we get a small sense of satisfaction by completing the game. If we have nothing more compelling to do, we’ll usually start another game of Solitaire and keep on until something more important comes along.
The second reason is that we humans all have a “fight-or-flight” conditioning built into us. We either go toward pleasure or avoid pain. When you’re stuck in a rut like this, you are being run by this “fight-or-flight” response. You are staying with a “pleasure” response and avoiding the pain. In our Solitaire game, the pleasure would be doing our habit and having the small pleasures of completing the games, and the pain would be making the effort of deciding and doing something else. Although, to many people, the idea of having to decide on doing something else may seem like a simple task, when you don’t have an idea of what to do can be extremely challenging. It’s so much easier to go back to the habit.
The third reason is a deep-seated belief that there is nothing else you can do. This is especially true with retirees because they’ve usually been doing the same ‘job’ for most of their lives. I was in IT for over 40 years and when I retired, I couldn’t see myself doing anything else even though I wanted to do something else. It took me a long time and lots of struggling to break this belief and a heart (deep-seated belief) level before I allowed myself to search for and start a new career.
Being stuck in a retirement rut is not unusual and, with a bit of help, you can get out of it.
If you feel like you’re in a rut and want to regain a productive and satisfying life, click on the link below to get my simple PDF guide to starting you on your path. Imagine your new exciting, happy, and fulfilling life and decide to take the first step toward it.
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