It is no secret that many of us simply do not know how to live for ourselves. For such people, work becomes a kind of base they rely on the search for the meaning of life. Having lost this support, the newly made pensioner feels lonely and useless. Often, such experiences lead to depression after retirement, endless illness, or constant interference in the lives of loved ones. The main focus of today's article is things to do when you retire that help you learn to love yourself and not fall victim to a psychological crisis.
Retirement Myths You Should Forget
Who said pensioners have less fun, constantly get sick or frustrated by not having what to do? It’s time to get rid of those retirement myths and take this wonderful period of life easier. No matter you are going to retire in the nearest future or you want to support your relatives who will soon face this stage, it will be useful for you to look at the bright side and understand what is true and what is a misconception.
All pensioners are grumpy and act the same
Very often, we are affected by stereotypes, perceptions, and beliefs that prevent us from living for ourselves and enjoying the retired life. When we imagine a retiree, a picture of an old, sad couch-potato with a bunch of pills in one hand and a newspaper in another arise in our mind. Allow yourself to refuse such representations. To do this, learn about successful people of your age that have retired and faced the same feelings as you do. And if they've managed to get out of this crisis, then you will definitely succeed. Allow yourself more and do not be afraid to dream, take risks and act. Replace negative statements about yourself and your new status with positive ones. For example, instead of “I am already old to start something new” - “I have already gained enough wisdom and experience to allow myself to take up an interesting hobby.” Or, “Life after retirement is over,” should be changed to “I have already done a lot, and now it is time to do what I’m interested in.” And act in accordance with these new ideas.
Post-retirement life is dull and useless
Sometimes retirement is accompanied by real depression. A person ceases to want something, it seems to them that old age has come, and it remains only to live out their term. No need to put an end to yourself. Be a role model for your children or acquaintances. Show them that life doesn’t end in retirement, that leaving work is not a reason to give up, turn into an old fogey, or fall into apathy. By setting such an example, you will gradually get used to your new status, cease to regret the past. However, it is often difficult to get out of depression without the support of a professional psychologist. Feel free to ask for help if simple retirement ideas do not distract you from sad thoughts!
No more romantic relationships
You will not enjoy your retirement by narrowing social circle, they cease to go out and forget about personal life. As a rule, pensioners have an abundance of free time, and they simply don’t know what to do when you retire. Hence, the result of this is depressions, deterioration of health and general boredom. In addition, a significant deterioration in well-being is often caused by a changing environment. Older people are often dubious. In communication with peers, almost always burdened with a whole bunch of various diseases, they begin to look for similar symptoms in themselves and almost always find them. Which, in the end, entails a typical hypochondria. To avoid such consequences, you need to switch yourself to hobbies, children, and grandchildren, i.e. try to fill the free time. All sorts of associations are currently being intensively developed in the whole world to help older people avoid the depressive state associated with retirement. It is important not to succumb to heavy thoughts and depressive states, as well as stereotypical ideas that old age should be spent alone so as not to get sick. In fact, the opposite is true: the more active you are, the more people you meet, the more intense and vibrant your life becomes. Remember that one of the most wonderful things to do when retired and bored is to fall in love!
Living the life of others
It happens that, leaving work, a person begins to actively intervene in the life of loved ones. Pensioner's teachings lead to family conflicts. The reason is still the same - the inability to live one's own life, an attempt to hide from social problems, diving into other people's problems. Most of all, in such a situation, the environment of the pensioner suffers, and it is the close people who should support them. If you are the relatives of retirees, do not show negative emotions. Thank grandfather or grandmother for the care and try to come up with something for them so that they feel needed. If you are a pensioner yourself, understand that your children and grandchildren should live their lives, and if they want to, they will come to visit you. You can buy tickets to the theater or to exhibitions, attend dating parties for the elderly and get involved in other retirement activities. But it is important not to give up and not be offended by failures. The task of loved ones is to push the pensioner out of the space where they locked themselves in the vicious circle of their lonely suffering and depending on the lives of others.
Sickness as a hobby
The situation when a person who felt sound and healthy a few months ago, when retiring, literally begins to "crumble into pieces" is really a thing. Sometimes the reasons for this condition are not in physiology at all. This is how the psychological crisis manifests itself, which forces the pensioner to seek support from others. The way to get attention is the disease. After all, loved ones will not refuse to visit if the loved one feels bad. And for single pensioners, the only way to get at least some kind of communication is endless visits to doctors. In fact, not all pensioners are sick and lonely, so stop pretending to get attention and come up with a new diagnose every time just to go see a doctor. This is not a good and fun idea to act like a child who wants to receive care and love in such a way. You are an adult mature person, better look through fun part-time jobs for retirees if you feel that your life has lost meaning without working.
Tips to Fight Depression After Retirement
The transition to a new standard of living is most difficult for people whose interests focused mainly on work. Labor represented the meaning of life for them and served as a source of inspiration. Former leaders are especially keen on helplessness and uselessness, they do not show interest in other matters, are plunging deeper into the abyss of depression and do not understand how to use their free time.
The depressive state can also appear due to a change in environment and excessive suspiciousness. Communicating with peers, by definition, not the healthiest people, older people look for similar symptoms in themselves. Sometimes, they find a lot of diseases (mostly fictitious) and fall into hypochondria. However, there are so many things to do in retirement and tips on how to stay forever young inside, so that feeling depressed is no longer an excuse!
Communicate more. Of course, the most important thing in a person’s life is their family. Spouse, children, grandchildren. All of them still need your help and support. To sit with grandchildren or to help your loved one with the housework - all this will make you feel a part of a whole and fill some free time you do not know where to spend. And most importantly, you should always remember that retirement does not change a person, we still remain ourselves. Several lines in a document cannot change everything in a single moment. Experience and knowledge, hobbies and talents, family and friends, in general, everything that makes up the concept of “life” has not disappeared. You can spend more time on yourself and on those who are dear to you.
Don't give up romantic relationships. Even if you do not longer feel that young and active, you should still continue loving and be loved. Dating may transform into its calmer, less stressful and time-consuming version. You may have a deer person that you can go on walks in a park, attend exhibitions or cook pasta at home the long winter evening. Retirement is the period of life when you finally do not have to rush anywhere so you can devote more time to yourself and your loved one. Even if you got divorced or your spouse is no longer alive, you should not give up a romantic relationship, now is only a beginning.
Discover the world. Each of us has some plans and dreams, the implementation of which required more time or energy than we have. But after retirement, a person receives such huge resources of both time and enthusiasm that takes on the implementation of a particular idea immediately. Whether it is repairing an apartment, raising dwarf rabbits or system programming. 
Think about favorite hobbies, clubs, dating by interests, and life will be immediately filled with new meaning. Discovering the world is another huge dream of the majority of us. Thanks to the modern low-cost airlines and an abundance of information about how to plan a trip on a shoestring budget, money is no longer a problem when it comes to traveling. To see the world today, you need just free time and a will.
Master new hobbies. Do not lock yourself in, try to spend more time with people and learn new things. In addition to workshops and museums, there are many places where people of retirement age can meet, relax, and spend their free time. Interest clubs, various courses, dance classes. Today, senior citizens throughout the world are passionately involved in dancing, sports, yoga, etc. By the way, sometimes retirees, leading an active and healthy lifestyle, find themselves working with the younger generation: for example, they train backyard football teams, go hiking with teenagers. Because spending time with those who are less mature and fed up with life, you can feel constantly inspired to act, move and stay in touch with the world as well as pass on your experience.
10 Hobbies for Retired Men
Retirement sometimes seems like a long-awaited deliverance from annoying work. However, having become pensioners and having fallen out of the usual work collective and schedule, people begin to ask questions about what to do next, what to devote their lives to. Without answering such questions and not finding new interesting retirement hobbies, many of them go into passive existence on the couch in front of the TV. Fortunately, this does not happen to everyone: a fairly large number of pensioners do not consider their age a sentence, but rather perceive retirement as the beginning of a new promising life stage.
In your free time, you can revive your former interests and creative pursuits as well as acquire new hobbies for retired men. As a rule, pensioners find themselves studying something innovative that has nothing to do with their past work and lifestyle.
Books and art
Reading books, especially fiction classical literature, increases the intellectual and spiritual level of a person. A person of mature age, who has already accumulated solid life experience, can reopen some already red books and see them from a new perspective. An additional benefit of reading is the prevention of senile dementia, strengthening memory. Acquaintance with literary masterpieces is a hobby accessible to absolutely every pensioner. You may need to use public libraries for this. Even low vision is not an obstacle to reading because today there are audiobooks.
You can also improve the cultural level and feel the influence of the art by visiting philharmonic societies, conservatories, various exhibitions, and theater performances. Such hobbies and types of cultural activities not only bring pleasure but also involve pensioners in public life, interaction with people.
Intellectual hobbies
They include activities like solving puzzles, crosswords and sudoku, logic games and memorizing poems are a great way to preserve memory, clarity, and speed of thinking, and prevent multiple sclerosis among senior citizens. A hobby such as chess, dominoes or poker is even more useful, as they require a companion to the game. Typically, a pensioner has a company of his relatives or friends, it brings families and friendly companies together and saves pensioners from loneliness. Old age is absolutely not an obstacle for those pensioners who are interested in politics. They can also take part in the activities of public organizations.
Traveling
Unfortunately, the majority of pensioners have a small pension and do not make it possible to travel to distant countries. The way out of this can be using lowcost airlines, Couchsurfing to find a host in another country for free or hitch-hiking inside your own country. There are surely many amazing places and unusual sights that you can visit within the limits of your state. Many categories of pensioners have significant benefits for travel by public transport, and travel agencies sometimes hold promotions, providing older people with some discounted options.
Volunteering
Volunteering is a socially useful hobby that allows a pensioner to feel their need and see the result of their actions, make friends with new people, spend time interestingly and productively. It can be anything from feeding animals at shelters to teaching kids something you are an expert at, for example holding workshops on the topic of your work. Another innovative idea is to combine nursing homes and orphanages for children with disabilities. There, children with disorders like Down Syndrome or Cerebral palsy who have been left by their parents receive love and support, and the elderly do not feel so lonely and useless. They spend time together, play, study, watch films and everyone feels happy.
Writing memoirs
Even if it seems that your relatives, children, and grandchildren, are completely aware of all you experience, thoughts and memories, your next descendants will not know you personally. Or if it seems that your family doesn’t pay attention to you, this may change in the near future, when your grand-grand grandchildren will enthusiastically read your letters, watch old photos from family albums and try to reconstruct and understand the era, in which you lived. Memoirs are always popular with readers and are a valuable source of information for historians.
Painting
Maybe you secretly dreamed of learning to draw all your life, but you always didn’t have enough time for this? If so, now is the right time to try! In painting, the most important thing is diligence and practice, so do not be afraid to start learning to draw, even if you are sure that you do not have the talent of a painter. To immerse yourself in this hobby, you only need paints, brushes, a canvas (however, they can be replaced with pencil and paper) and some free time. And in case something goes wrong or your painting turns out to look not so naturalistic, you can always say that was the author’s plan.
Gardening
Female retirees are usually engaged in the cultivation of indoor flowers, and men tend to more extensive gardening. But it doesn’t mean that this is not an activity for a real man. Having your piece of land and some simple equipment, you can begin to cultivate the garden. This hobby is not only the possibility of implementing design ideas but also excellent physical training in the fresh air, very useful for senior citizens. And if you manage to grow crops, you will always have fresh greens, seeds and vegetables you may boast of in front of your friends and grandchildren.
Brewing
This is a hobby for senior citizens who know a lot about quality drinks and want to experiment in this area, creating something of their own, original. Brewing requires special knowledge that can be gleaned from books or the Internet, and the availability of equipment, for example, home brewing units, which can also be ordered on the Internet.
Astronomy
The starry sky always attracts the eye, rises interest to space distances and arouses interest in the structure of the Universe. Nowadays, pensioners who are interested in the topic of space shouldn't limit themselves to watching TV shows and reading books about it, but they can also study the night sky with their compact telescope, which can be placed in their yard, on the roof of the house or even on the balcony.
Fishing
This traditional male hobby remains relevant at all times. Unity with nature, the opportunity to feel like a getter, the romance of wild places and excitement are the reasons for such a high popularity of fishing. And if young people employed at work rarely can afford to go fishing for their pleasure, then pensioners have many more opportunities to practice this hobby. And if you take your friends with you, it will transform into an exciting journey and time-spending.
Creativity is an active state and a manifestation of freedom, the result of creative activity, it is a gift given to a person from above. Scientists have proven that creativity can be a great incentive for a new round of life for older people. Passion for an interesting occupation helps older people usefully spend time, communicate and - most importantly - maintain a decent level of intellectual and physical fitness. Doctors say that when setting a creative task, a large number of those brain areas are activated that have not been used before, but which are necessary for creativity. And when the brain comes to life - the body comes to life. So, do not fall victim to a post-retirement depression or consider quitting your job. Life is still going and developing, so should you.