I retired, then I found my purpose

I thought I would be good at retirement.

I had, after all, spent years fantasising about it.

No alarm clock. No commute. No endless emails or office politics. 

I imagined leisurely mornings, travel, lunches that didn't involve looking at my watch and the deeply satisfying knowledge that somewhere, other people were sitting in a budget meeting and I wasn't.

And for a while, it was marvellous.

Until I got bored.

I missed having a purpose.

I Didn't Miss My Job. I Missed Being Useful.

This was the surprising bit.

I didn't particularly want my old working life back. I had retired for a reason.

But I did miss contributing.

I missed interesting conversations. I missed solving problems. I missed being around people who were trying to do something, change something or become something.

Most of all, I missed feeling useful.

Retirement had given me something I'd wanted for years: time.

The problem was that nobody tells you quite what to do with all of it.

There are only so many drawers you can reorganise before you have to confront the possibility that your cutlery was never the problem.

So, What Exactly Was I Retiring From?

That question changed things for me.

I'd assumed retirement meant leaving work behind.

But perhaps I didn't want to stop working altogether. Perhaps I simply wanted to stop working like that.

I didn't want another demanding full-time role.

I didn't want to climb another ladder. Frankly, I'd climbed enough ladders.

And I certainly didn't want to prove that I could still keep up with people 20 years younger than me. They could have that particular pleasure.

What I did want was to use what I'd learned.

By the time you reach retirement age, you have accumulated an extraordinary amount of experience almost by accident.

You've made good decisions and terrible ones.

You've worked with inspiring people and people who made you consider hiding in the stationery cupboard.

You've handled difficult conversations.

You've doubted yourself.

You've recovered from things that felt catastrophic at the time.

I began to wonder whether all that experience was really supposed to stop being useful simply because I'd reached retirement age.

Then I Found Coaching

Coaching wasn't initially part of some grand master plan.

There was no morning when I leapt out of bed and announced, “I shall become a coach.”

 

I'd always been interested in people: what makes us confident, what makes us hesitate, why perfectly capable women sometimes struggle to see in themselves what everyone around them can see perfectly clearly.

I began to wonder if I could do something with that interest. 

So I explored She Leads coach training.

And that was when retirement began to look less like an ending and more like a rather unexpected beginning.

Experience Helps. But Experience Doesn't Make You a Coach.

This was one of my first important lessons.

After decades in the workplace, it's tempting to think:

I´ve seen a few things. Surely I can help.

And you probably can.

But coaching is not sitting opposite someone and telling them what you did in 1997.

Nor is it dispensing wisdom over coffee.

That's advice.

Sometimes very good advice. But it isn't coaching.

Learning to coach meant learning to listen differently.

It meant asking questions without already having the answer I wanted someone to arrive at.

It meant becoming comfortable with silence.

This is harder than it sounds.

It meant resisting the urge to say, “Well, what I would do is…”

And perhaps most importantly, it meant recognising that my experience was valuable without assuming somebody else's path should look like mine.

The She Leads Professional coach training gave me a framework for something I'd been instinctively drawn to for years.

And I loved it.

I Found a Different Kind of Ambition

One of the strange things about retirement is that ambition is supposed to disappear.

Apparently, at a certain age, we're expected to swap ambition for gardening.

I have nothing against gardening.

But why should wanting to contribute, learn, earn, build or make a difference have an expiry date?

What changed for me wasn't the existence of ambition.

It was my definition of it.

Earlier in my career, ambition had been connected to achievement. The next role. The next goal. The next thing to prove.

Now, I wanted something different.

I wanted interesting work.

I wanted flexibility.

I wanted conversations that mattered.

I wanted to use my experience without being consumed by my work.

And I wanted enough space left in my life to enjoy the freedom I'd spent decades earning.

Coaching gave me that possibility.

My Career Didn't Become Irrelevant When I Retired

I think this is something we need to talk about more, particularly with women approaching retirement.

We can spend 30 or 40 years accumulating knowledge, experience, judgement, resilience and relationships.

Then we're handed a leaving card and somehow expected to regard all of that as belonging to our former life.

I don't.

My previous career is part of what I bring to coaching.

So are the mistakes.

So are the difficult years.

So are the moments when I wasn't sure what I was doing.

Perhaps especially those.

Coach training didn't ask me to discard my experience.

It taught me how to use it differently.

Maybe You're Not Finished Either

If you're approaching retirement, or you've already retired and have started wondering whether endless leisure is quite as fulfilling as advertised, I understand.

You may not want another career.

You may not even know exactly what you want.

But if there's a quiet voice saying, Surely I still have something to offer, I wouldn't dismiss it.

You have decades of experience behind you.

You have perspective you couldn't have had when you were younger.

And you have the opportunity to decide what you want the next chapter to be.

For me, that chapter was coaching.

I retired.

Then, rather unexpectedly, I found my purpose.

And I'm very glad I didn't organise another drawer instead.

Could Coaching Be Your Next Chapter?

If Ruth's story feels familiar, the She Leads Female Leadership and Coach Training is designed for women who want to turn their leadership, professional and life experience into powerful coaching skills.

Whether you're approaching retirement, considering a career change after 50 or 60, or looking for meaningful work after retirement, professional coach training can give you the skills and confidence to explore a new way of working , one built around your experience and the life you want now.

You don't have to start again.

You can start from everything you've already learned.

Discover the She Leads Female Leadership and Coach Training and explore where coaching could take you next.