“Surprisingly retirement is better than I expected. I think that’s because I planned ahead, with the help of a retirement coach.” Barbra Fischer, 66, Toronto; from Tales of the Golden Age, The Globe and Mail, April 16, 2022.

Barbra Fischer isn’t my client, but it warmed my heart to know that retirement coaching contributed to what sounds like a great transition into her post-career life. I think it’s also noteworthy that she “planned ahead” rather than waiting until she was retired to figure everything out.

That decision to plan ahead is something the majority of people, for many reasons, don’t take. Truth is, we’re not very good at thinking about the future even though our advanced brains are fully capable of it.

That might sound bizarre since we think ahead much of the time – what do I have to/want to do tomorrow, next week, next year. We create and build with the future in mind. We dream of future success. Nonetheless, present opportunities and comforts still dominate both our carefully considered actions and our impulsive ones. It’s very hard for us to do things today that will benefit our future selves at some point in the distant vs near future.

And therein lies the value of coaching. If you’re nearing retirement, a coach can help you harness your dreams and assess if they hold enough magic for you to keep chasing them in your post career or if there’s something else that pulls more strongly.

• A coach can help you reconnect with yourself and what’s important to you at this stage of life. What lingers from your younger self? What are you ready to let go of?

• A coach can provide support to productively ride out the uncertainty that naturally comes with a big life transition and possible reinvention.

• A coach can encourage you to stretch enough to see the possibilities on the horizon and start to move toward them.

• A coach can help you get into a future state of mind and plan ahead in a way that doesn’t feel onerous or overwhelming.

Leaving your career and stepping into your next chapter is something that can and should be done lightly to a dance rhythm. A coach can help you choreograph the steps.