Career - Life - Transitions
Retirement: Adventure or Misadventure?
For many, retirement can’t come soon enough. No more meetings, deadlines, commutes, or performance reviews — just freedom and time to finally do what you want. Retirement ads often paint an enticing picture: beaches, books, and the bliss of no alarm clock. You’ve worked hard. Isn’t it time to enjoy the rewards?
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But here’s the reality…
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While retirement promises freedom, many studies demonstrate that it is not always smooth sailing. After researching the topic of stress, Drs. Holmes and Rahe rank retirement as number 10 among a list of 43 life events that produce stress for humans.
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So why the disconnect?
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Because retirement is not just a financial milestone — it’s a profound life change. It affects your identity, your routines, your relationships, and your sense of purpose. And it can be unexpectedly disorienting. Yet, what we talk about most of the time when we envision retirement is the financial/pension/insurance side of it.​​​
Let’s be honest! We all want a retirement that’s long, healthy, and fulfilling. But getting there takes much more than a pension plan. It takes honest and profound reflection, practical planning, and a willingness to explore what comes next.
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We are offering a most engaging one-day seminar, specifically designed to help you:
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Have a good understanding and appreciation of what retirement is.
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Look at the various phases of retirement from the beginning to the end.
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Look at the impact of transitioning from work to a no-work situation.
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Identify the key elements of a solid preparation.
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Identify serious challenges and how to navigate them.
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Learn from real-life stories and insights from others on a similar path.​
Through structured discussions, practical exercises, and candid conversations, you’ll walk away with many items to reflect on, tools to establish clarity, and a much stronger foundation for the road ahead.
Who Should Attend?
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If you’re less than 36 months from retirement, this seminar is for you. Past participants have included Deputy Ministers, CEOs, executives, managers, and staff across all levels. No matter your role, the issues we explore are universal and deeply personal.
Hard to believe that for about 12 years before COVID, I conducted close to 600 retirement sessions across the country — including nearly 100 with APEX — reaching thousands of participants. It has been deeply gratifying to see just how beneficial these sessions were for people at all levels. In fact, word of mouth was my main form of marketing throughout.
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The sessions focus on the more personal and meaningful aspects of retirement — the ones that traditional courses rarely address. To be clear, I’m not minimizing the financial side of retirement; it’s important. But it’s a serious mistake to make it the main concern. My philosophy is simple: “You don’t retire if you don’t have enough money. But you don’t retire because you have enough money.”
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I can say with confidence that retirement is one of the most significant transitions you’ll ever face. Fortunately, I came to that realization myself before retiring — and it still took me two and a half years to work through the inner struggles that surfaced each time I thought about it. Looking back, it was arguably the most difficult personal challenge I’ve ever had to overcome.
