As a result, a common competency trap that retirees can fall into involves becoming a Conspiracy Theorist. People subscribing to these theories represent the faction that believes the Government is planning to steal everyone's 401(k) and that secret societies rule the world. To me, they are the most interesting and, at the same time, the most concerning.

Without new skills or a definitive role, these folks find that the news media becomes the default agenda of daily life and are consumed by headlines, sound bites and extreme opinions. It's a logical but scary replacement mechanism because many clients in this situation believe they are getting smarter or are among the "informed."  Unfortunately, most of the time they dominate conversations and push family and friends away because their audience gets sick of hearing it, don't want to argue about it, or frankly have more important things to do than stop the next secret government coup.     

The final retirement alter ago that I want to address is the Homebody -- the unadventurous, friendless person who has more cats than any human should be allowed to own. They cut time they spend interacting with others and fail to maintain the friendships they enjoyed in the workplace.  

Study after study suggests that friendships, or the lack thereof, can be the single best predictor of overall satisfaction in retirement. Life expectancy, mood and physical health can all be dramatically increased through a strong network of friends, but people don't always plan for the social aspects of their retirement. Retirees who don't have strong relationships -- because of retiring before their friends do, moving away or realizing current friends just aren't fun, reliable or engaging -- can quickly become homebodies.   

Even when they have strong relationships, people who fail to maintain their physical health increase the likelihood that they will have a poor self-image. Their size and appearance can cause them to stay home more than they might if they felt healthy and more able-bodied.  For example, those who gain excessive weight increase the likelihood of becoming a homebody because they may not fit comfortably into a theater seat, lawn chair or charter bus aisle, ultimately disconnecting themselves from their peers and others.  

Spiritual and financial factors, as well as others, can contribute to these and other not-so-pretty retirement personalities. Here are three simple things advisors can do to help clients better manage their self-esteem during retirement: 

Achievement
Advisors looking to help clients identify and work toward a higher, or at least equal, sense of achievement during retirement should make a simple adjustment in their retirement planning conversations: Instead of sticking to general guidelines and questions like, "When do you want to retire and what do you hope to do?" be more specific and direct. Connect their plans to ways in which they measure their self-esteem.  

Ask them to write down five things they want to accomplish in their first year of retirement. Ask them to establish some mental, physical, social, spiritual and financial goals.

Competence
Find out where your clients stand when it comes to life lessons, skills and abilities. My favorite question to ask a client is, "What's the one thing you would say your career as X has taught you?" Find out, if they had to do it all over again, would they do it the same way or differently. And ask them which skills and abilities were the hardest to acquire. The answers lay the perfect groundwork to address competence issues by asking if and how they plan to use those lessons and skills in retirement?  

Acceptance
Asking or talking about a client's social life or how many cats they own may not be a comfortable topic for every advisor. If that's the case, provide a resource that will help clients address their issues. Whether you print a list of 100 popular "bucket list" items or encourage them to take a local community education class or attend an upcoming library presentation, give clients some practical things to help them stay socially connected. One of my favorite suggestions is to tell clients to take pictures. Everybody loves viewing pictures of themselves. I tell them at their next get-together or event, take some pictures and use them to connect with new and existing friends.  After taking a picture ask, "Are you on Facebook?" or "If you'd like I can e-mail a picture to you."