Most of us will reach retirement having spent the previous 30 plus years bringing up a family and holding down a 9 to 5 job. Our days and weeks will have been filled to overflowing and we will inevitably have found little time for ourselves. I took early retirement 3 years ago and have struggled during that time to find some sort of fulfillment in my life. I had been so used to my days being planned out for me, either as a mum of 3 children or latterly, as a head teacher of a school for children with behavioral problems, that filling my days with something meaningful was more difficult than I ever imagined. The Art of Living seemed to somehow escape me and I was left with an empty hole that I was finding very difficult to fill. I missed the routine and I missed the community of the people I worked with. I wouldn’t necessarily have called most of them my close friends but they were colleagues with whom I had formed an attachment and with whom I spent most of my days. We were a mutual support group and I was no longer a part of it.

At the beginning of 2010 I suddenly realized that I had been approaching life in the wrong way. I was more concerned with filling my days than with discerning what my life was really about. After all this time I realized that I had spent the majority of my life doing what was right for other people and had lost touch completely with what was right for me. I had lost touch with myself and I had no idea what I wanted in life. That sudden realization that you have lost touch with your essential self can be a very scary moment but one that if heeded can change the course of the rest of your life.

I am not normally one for making new year resolutions as I believe they are rarely kept, but this year I made an exception. I resolved to get in touch with my own needs and to find activities that would enhance my life and give me a worthwhile interest. I also resolved to try to understand myself a little better, what motivates me and why I respond in the way that I do, in an attempt to make better choices.

In this way I hoped that I might truly come to understand the meaning of the art of living and learn how to apply it in my own life during my retirement years