Therefore, helping clients create a meaningful retirement, means helping them develop relationships, activities and hobbies that foster positive emotions. This can be accomplished with a series of planning questions that highlight the people, things and situations that inspire clients. Such as:
• What makes you feel inspired, on top of the world,or unstoppable?
• Which activities make you feel alive?
• When are you at your best and in the zone?
• Where is your happy place?
• Which family members, friends or colleagues energize you?
The whole idea is to be able to make clients aware of the need to infuse their life with these things but also help them maximize their resources (retirement savings) toward aspects of PERMA. Including things that foster optimism, gratitude, achievement through the use of talents/strengths and purpose in life, for example.
Discussing the mental aspects, or psychology of retirement, doesn’t take place enough, because many people, including seasoned advisors, assume that retirement will be this happy, fun and engaging place that magically unfolds by itself. But, that’s simply not the case. A transition of this magnitude can be very challenging, and retirement doesn’t shelter people from the harsh realities of life. Therefore, people aren’t always mentally prepared for it and can get caught up in negative patterns that hold them back or limit their potential.
Therefore, advisors need to be prepared to come across more clients who are either struggling with their transition, or want help to thrive and flourish during it. They need new ammunition in terms of quality questions that can challenge clients or allow them to see it from a fresh perspective.
The nice thing for advisors is that the benefits of Positive Psychology gives us more than just the opportunity to do this by helping clients step outside of the traditional retirement box and thrive. It also gives us a practical model for moving conversations from money to well being. Approaching retirement like this is how advisors will continue to differentiate their practices, while making themselves more referable.