There are two useful ways of thinking about wellbeing. Hedonic wellbeing is the pleasure and enjoyment we get from life. Eudaimonic wellbeing is the satisfaction that comes from meaning, personal growth and doing things that matter to us. Psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward Deci explored these two approaches in their review of wellbeing research. The terms are a bit of a mouthful, but they help explain why having an enjoyable life doesn’t always mean we feel fulfilled. www.annualreviews.org
A former colleague of mine discovered this after she retired. I’ll call her Anne here.
Anne had spent decades in hard, high-pressure work. She had done a lot of planning for retirement, and her main goal was travel, particularly slow travel. She wanted time to get to know a place rather than rush from one destination to another. Not long after finishing work, she left for a month in Europe.
She loved the trip. But, as often happens when people leave work, we lost contact. When we caught up two years later, I was surprised by how bored and unmotivated she seemed.
She told me she had loved all the travel for the first 18 months, but then began to get tired of it. She had realised she hadn’t made sure there was enough balance in her life. Life couldn’t just be travel, she said. She really missed having some other purpose and was now trying to work out what that might be.
What struck me was that Anne had done what many of us hope to do. She had retired with plans, the freedom to travel and something she was looking forward to. She had enjoyed it, too. But as time went on, she found she wanted something more.
Pleasure is an important part of life
After years of work and responsibility, having time to enjoy ourselves can be wonderful. We can take a longer holiday, take our time over breakfast, read for an afternoon or go for a walk without having to fit it around everything else.
And those pleasures matter. When you have spent decades working hard, it can take a while to stop measuring a day by how much you have achieved. I think we can carry that habit into retirement without realising it. I certainly did and it took months for me to not think this way.
Enjoyment doesn’t have to involve a big trip or an expensive outing. It might be dancing, a good meal, a swim, a book or a conversation that makes you laugh. For me, walking and dancing are things I enjoy for their own sake. They don’t need to lead to anything else.
Anne’s travels had given her a lot of pleasure. There was nothing wrong with that. What she began to miss was having something else in her life when she came home.
We also want something that matters to us
This is where eudaimonic wellbeing comes in. It is the satisfaction we get from learning, growing, using our abilities and doing things that reflect what matters to us.
Purpose is part of this, but it is broader than having one particular role or goal. It can also be about developing an interest, maintaining relationships or living more in line with your values. Ryan, Veronika Huta and Deci’s later work explored this approach to living well, including the importance of personal growth, relationships and goals we value for their own sake. selfdeterminationtheory.org
For many of us, work provided some of these things without us having to think much about them. We had problems to solve, skills to use, people to support and things we were working towards. Even if the job was stressful, some of that may have given us real satisfaction.
So you can be very happy to leave work and still miss parts of it. You might miss the challenge, the feeling of contributing or simply knowing that someone was expecting you to turn up.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you want to go back. But it can help to ask what, specifically, you miss. It gives you a better starting point than trying to keep yourself busy.
Purpose doesn’t have to be big or grand
I think the word “purpose” can make this harder than it needs to be. It can sound as though we should all be looking for a major project or a new calling.
But purpose can be as small as helping a grandchild learn something new, tending a garden, supporting a community group or being someone a friend can count on. It might be learning French, researching your family history or working on something you have wanted to try for years.
What matters is the satisfaction you get from it. Someone else might look at your activity and think it sounds rather ordinary. That doesn’t make it any less meaningful to you.
At the same time, finding purpose doesn’t have to mean taking on so much responsibility that retirement becomes exhausting. If you have spent years meeting deadlines and looking after other people, you may want to think carefully about what you commit to. Something can matter to you without taking over your life.
Pleasure and meaning often come together
Research by Veronika Huta and Richard Ryan found that pursuing enjoyment and pursuing meaning were associated with different, overlapping benefits. Enjoyment was more closely linked with positive feelings and carefreeness, while meaning-focused pursuits were more closely linked with a sense of meaning. Both were associated with vitality. It is a useful reminder that both have something to offer. pure.ewha.ac.kr
In our everyday lives, they often overlap. Gardening can be enjoyable and give you the satisfaction of growing something. Learning a language can be fun as well as challenging. Spending time with a grandchild can bring pleasure, connection and a strong sense of purpose.
Travel can do this, too. It can involve learning, building confidence, exploring your interests and spending time with people you love. Anne’s experience doesn’t mean travel is only about pleasure. It means that, for her, travel wasn’t enough on its own.
I think that is the more useful question: does your life have enough of what matters to you? You might have plenty of enjoyable things planned but miss having something to work towards. Or you might have a full schedule of responsibilities and realise there is very little in it that you simply enjoy.
Finding your own balance
My own retirement taught me that having lots of plans doesn’t necessarily mean you will feel settled. I had plenty of ideas, but the loss of identity and structure left me anxious and ungrounded. It took me a while to find my way towards writing and creating courses, supporting people through their own retirement transitions.
That work gives me purpose. I enjoy developing ideas, learning and creating something that might help someone else. But walking, bike-riding, dancing and spending time with people I care about are important, too. I wouldn’t want retirement to become entirely about writing the next article or finishing another course.
You might find it helpful to ask yourself the following questions.
What am I enjoying at the moment? And what am I doing that feels meaningful to me?
If one is much easier to answer than the other, that may be worth thinking about. Perhaps you need more time to enjoy yourself after years of responsibility. Perhaps, like Anne, you have enjoyed the freedom but are beginning to want something else as well.
The balance can change. What you want in your first year of retirement may be different from what you want two or five years later. Anne hadn’t failed at retirement. She had discovered something about what she needed, and she was beginning to act on it.
A fulfilling life can include things we look forward to and things we care about contributing to. The question is what that combination looks like for you.
If you’d like to reflect on this, my Retirement Thrive Score explores four ingredients of a fulfilling retirement: energy, connection, purpose and vision. It’s 12 questions, takes about two minutes and gives you a free personalised reading to help you consider what’s going well and what might welcome a little more attention.
