Conclusion

This conclusion will offer my own individual perspective on the topic of radical retirement and offer an extended postscript on what I have noticed in the chapter themes, which have inspired and challenged my own frame of reference for this fascinating subject. As you read this, review your own takeaways so far and decide how this might influence your own approach as you go forward. As a career coach, I have discovered that self-reinvention is not what it seems. I have learnt this from personal experience in my own career life and through powerful transformational conversations as a coach. Reinvention is not necessarily a complete metamorphosis. It rarely is. It can be a sudden switch, a painstaking unravelling or a slower dawning awareness. Nonetheless, reinvention seems to me to be a shorthand term for the process of sifting through known strengths, to re-purpose our outer self and inner mindset for a change of life imperative. Imperatives come in many guises, and I have had the privilege of observing how clients face challenges and devise new avenues for their selves in response to changing circumstances and aspirations. This chapter is written from my own arrival at a place of some hard-won expertise, based on my own series of reinventions and thirty years of career coaching conversations. I am happy to commend to you the wisdom and experience found in the previous chapters. I find that my beliefs about reinvention have been thoroughly augmented and confirmed by the insightful and compelling impressions of my chapter colleagues. I will acknowledge particular themes that have surprised and engaged me at the conclusion of this chapter.