Imagine the day ….
-No more malpractice insurance premiums
-No more people on the other end of 800 numbers telling you how to practice medicine
-No more CME guilt/anxiety about keeping up with the latest advances in a specialty that keeps reinventing itself
-No more worry about patients.
And then comes the surprising challenge for a busy physician: growing comfortable with the “retired physician” identity, and filling unstructured time. More than financial concerns, our physician clients struggle with the psychological aspects of retirement. No matter where you currently are in your career journey, you will better adjust to this inevitable stage of life if you consider the following factors.

• How Do You Define Retirement?
Retirement. The very word conjures up drastically differing notions. Will it be a challenge? An opportunity? A relief? Will it entail a journey into a dreaded, barren land? Is it an ending, or an exciting new beginning?
How you define it will affect how you feel about it and shape how you deal with it. Physicians who cope best start early in their careers to develop the attitude that retirement is the inevitable, final “career;” an opportunity to create a new normal financially, psychologically, and in family relationships.

• Expect It to Feel Awkward
No matter how prepared you are, the retiring procedure itself can be daunting. Retiring is filled with firsts. For physicians, moving beyond the habit of saying yes to requests by others to take care of their needs can be the most awkward part of retiring. As one of our physician friends put it, “The hardest part for me has been saying no, even to those who beg, ‘Please, please take care of me or my loved ones.’ I’ve spent my life putting patients’ needs first, before my own or my family’s needs. I feel like I’m being selfish. I know that I’m not, but my emotions are still there.”
Adjusting to the psychological re-definition that comes with retirement takes time. And it will feel awkward, at least for a while.

• Know That You are a New Pioneer
There are no roadmaps to shorten your learning curve as you find your way around the territory of “retired physician.” Indeed, many feel that medicine is a priesthood; once in, always in. That lasting identity can bring both good and bad news about retirement. Positive is the fact that, after a lifetime of productivity, there is no reason to fall prey to all-or-nothing thinking and turn your back on the art and science that you love. Finding ways to continue your involvement in medicine – sans the time and performance demands – is a characteristic of successfully retired physicians.
On the other hand, research has shown that those who adjust best to retirement do so by diversifying their involvements in other arenas. Primary here is forging new levels of comfort with positive self-care and new levels of connection with friends and family.

• Develop a New “Relationship” with Time
“All my life I’ve fought it, worked against it, raced it, lamented its passing, and generally struggled with time. Now, I’ve got to learn to embrace it’s every moment.” These sage words by a retired physician eloquently express a universal dilemma faced by the retired docs we’ve known. Sure, you might be able to dodge it for a while --- with travel, unbridled obsessiveness about golf or some other hobby, or other projects that distract you --- but successful retirement entails learning to caress, not battle with, time. This doesn’t mean growing complacent doing nothing. To the contrary, the healthiest and happiest people remain productive until death. But happily retired physicians learn to adjust their expectations about their volume and pace of achievements. They value the variable of meandering a bit in any given day, week, or month.

• Practice Pleasure
What do you truly enjoy doing? Strange as it may seem, most highly productive people do not really know the answer to this question. A lifetime of striving to face obligations, responsibilities, and quests can leave you confused about aversion relief and pleasure. When this happens, the relief we feel when yet another item is checked off our to-do list may be the closest we come to true relaxation and pleasure. Resilient physicians learn early-on to incorporate many, mini forays into healthy pleasures throughout their busy weeks. If you’ve missed this lesson, don’t despair: Now is the time to start taking better care of yourself.

• Focus on Family
Do you harbor a fantasy about how you would like your family relationships to be? How would you like to be remembered in your roles as parent, partner, grandparent, or extended family member? It’s never too late to end a dysfunctional family legacy that affected your own development. You can be the source of a new beginning for generations to come.
Indeed, the second half of marriage and family life can and should be the best – a time to dance in the empty nest; to forge new levels of friendship and connection with grown children and grandchildren; and make amends with whomever you call family.
Physician Robert Moser cautioned that “retirement is the final career for both you and your spouse.” Approach it with a plan, with a positive attitude, and with a refocusing of your considerable talents and energies.