From Success to Significance: Helping Executives Transition to the Next Chapter

While most people experience a positive transition to retirement, approximately one-third of all retirees find the transition challenging, even dubbing it “retirement shock” (Retirement Coaches Association, 2025).

How do you know if you might struggle with this transition?

• When you introduce yourself at parties, you lead with your title or profession, not your hobbies or interests.

• When you wake at 3am, your mind is working through situations, problems, issues, five years down the road.

• You spend your weekends thinking about the strength of your team and the vision to inspire them.

If you are a senior leader, entrepreneur, military officer, or work as a lawyer, doctor, or accountant, chances are good that –without preparation -- you might struggle with this shift.

Why the struggle?

Let’s put these pieces together. You have dedicated countless hours to build a career that is both challenging and rewarding. You have sacrificed free time and family time to reach those goals. You are proud of what you have accomplished, and your personal identity is closely connected to (maybe even overlapping) your professional identity.

Now envision yourself in retirement.

You are no longer at the top of the invite list. Your input is not sought out as frequently. Your calls not returned as quickly. The organization you once led is succeeding without you at the helm. And you may not be the sole decisionmaker at home.

What is the result? Identity crisis.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

We will likely live 25 years or more in “retirement.” Longevity experts suggest we plan for our next chapter as a time of fruitful discovery and expanding our sense of self. What do you want to do with those bountiful years? Start a new business? Write a book? Become a professional volunteer? Mentor young professionals? Blog about your world travels? All of these are possible when we take the time to acknowledge ---and claim---a shift in identity.

From Singular Success to Expansive Significance

When our identity is defined by the work we do, we limit ourselves to a surface identity, one defined by the roles we perform. But our identity is also created by the relationships we nurture: friend, partner, neighbor, parent, sibling, mentor. And deeper still, is our core self: who we are at our essence in terms of our values, character, and beliefs.

It has been said that we must move from a mental framework of “human doing,” with our lives being measured by our productivity and achievement, to that of “human being,” or even “human becoming,” defined by our presence, meaning, and relationships. This shift requires us to consider much more than our title or position. It requires us to ask ourselves, “what is the significance of my life…beyond the success of my career?”

If your heart just began to race, or you felt a bit defensive of your desire to continue in your role, I invite you to pause on that reaction and explore it a bit further.  

Questions to Consider when Exploring An Expanded Identity

Spend a few moments thinking or journaling about these questions.

• If I had no title and no role, who would I be?

• What qualities in me are unchanging, regardless of circumstance?

• When I am remembered someday, what essence do I want people to describe?

• Beyond what I do, who am I becoming?

• Imagine you are informed by your doctor that you have one more year of life. How do you imagine spending your time? What regrets might surface for you?

As a Certified Professional Retirement Coach (CPRC), my hope is that we each enter a period of expansive significance. A time when we allow ourselves to move beyond restricted role identity and see ourselves in technicolor.

And let me be clear. I am not suggesting that “work” itself is the “problem.” The issue is in how we define ourselves, what limits we place on our value if work is the sole defining factor of our lives.

Why do I care about this so much?

I had a cardiac arrest at 42 and was forced to take a medical leave of absence for six months to allow my brain to heal and my short-term memory to return. You would think my reaction would be joy in hearing this news.  I would have time to help my eldest with her transition to high school, my youngest navigate his final year in grade school. I could enjoy coffee with friends and casual strolls with my husband.

Instead, I burst into tears. “No! I need to work!” My “need” was not based in financial necessity; it was personal identity. Let me be clear, I was not a Nobel Prize winner, nor even an award-winning professor. I am not proud of this reaction. But I have learned from it.

Over the course of those six months, I began to expand my sense of self beyond what I do to who I want to be. Do I still work in the evenings and weekends? Absolutely. Do I have to be intentional about expanding my interests outside of work. Yes. Did I become the “perfect” mom? No.

But the time away from work helped me realize that my employer did just fine without me. It was clear that I “needed” my employer more than it needed me. With that harsh reality, I began to think about what I wanted out of life – and where I was needed in life. As Mary Oliver asked, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this question of identity. What do you think of “human becoming” as a goal? What will you do with your one wild and precious life?