Are Mai Tai’s For Life Truly The End-All-Be-All In Retirement?
I specialize in anxiety and resilience work here in San Diego, and a version of this question from clients approaching retirement: is doing nothing actually the goal? At a recent Navy SEAL Foundation conference in San Diego, I was impacted by Yale professor Dr. Laurie Santos discussion on “flow state” and happiness. Drawing from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi; this is often applied to athletic performance and she defines it as losing track of time while pressing to the limit, challenging yourself, while using our personally honed skill set.
This could explain why retirement and mortality rates are highly correlated – just sitting on the couch or retiring on a beach and drinking Mai Tai’s for life, don’t put us in “flow.” Even on days off, flow state can be achieved that maximize that relax time.
Flow state is also not immersing in video games for (3) days. While losing track of time, this isn’t employing something unique within us that presses forward – passionately. We are not on this planet as mere consumers – we have something individuated, only we can provide.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”