Retired But Not Tired: Retirement Made Easy

Indu Trehan, Bk Trehan

Description

Retirement is usually perceived as boredom, hopelessness and, virtually, the dead end of one's life. But it is a complete misconception. In fact, retirement is the beginning of another phase of life that can be satisfying and meaningful, even better than the 'productive phase', provided we make some smart choices and follow the right strategies. Like other important things in life, we must have some higher purpose, some goal, or mission in life to fulfil after retiring. Our inspiration and deeds should convince others of how great, wonderful and purposeful retired life can be. Retired But Not Tired, a thought-provoking and useful guide, helps us plan a happy, fulfilling and meaningful life after retirement. A must-read for recent retirees and those wanting to plan ahead.

Sujets

• Old Age
• Sociology
• Personal care
• Retirement
• Mind
• Health
• Business
• Family
• Body
• Society
• Job

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9789351940777
• Langue: English

Extrait

BK Trehan , M.Tech. is an engineer, writer and teacher. He has a post-graduate degree in management systems from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. After working for thirty-five years in senior management positions in the oil and gas industry in India and abroad, he retired in 2002 as Vice-President of a major oil company in India.
Yoga is his passion. Amid his busy professional career, he has been teaching yoga in India, the US and South America. He has also been writing, teaching, and conducting workshops and seminars on the subject. He is a consultant in the area of self-development and empowerment, working to improve the quality of human life. His workshops on ‘managing retirement successfully’ and ‘stress management by yoga’ are popular in the corporate world. He is the author of the book, The Joy of Living by Yoga .
Indu Trehan, M.Sc. from Delhi University, has worked as a research scientist in Indian Council of Medical Research and World Health Organization for many years before taking an early retirement to team up with her husband to popularize yoga. She has a diploma in yoga and naturopathy, and teaches yoga as a community service. She is the co-author of the book The Joy of Living by Yoga .

ROLI BOOKS
This digital edition published in 2015
First published in 2007 by The Lotus Collection An imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd. M-75, Greater Kailash- II Market New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 40682000 Email: [e-mail] Website: www.rolibooks.com
Copyright © BK Trehan & Indu Trehan, 2007
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, print reproduction, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Roli Books. Any unauthorized distribution of this e-book may be considered a direct infringement of copyright and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
eISBN: 978-93-5194-077-7
Photographs courtesy: BK Trehan & Indu Trehan Cover Design: Supriya Saran
All rights reserved. This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published.
Contents
Acknowledgements Introduction
Retirement – The Big Picture
Are You Ready for Retirement?
Planning Your Retirement
Finding a Purpose in Life
Financial Security in Retirement
Taking Care of Your Health
Living Joyfully with Yoga
Stay Connected with Family and Friends
Spirituality: The Foundation of Our Life
Common Ailments in Senior Years
Some Safety Precautions for Senior Citizens
Key to Successful Retirement
Some Remarkable Seniors
Appendix-1 Calculating Your Daily Calorie Requirement
Appendix-2 Calorie Reckoner
Appendix-3 Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA)
Acknowledgements
T hanks are due to Indu, my wife, who helped me immensely by co-authoring this book. Without her contribution, support and enthusiasm, it was impossible to bring the book in its present form. She, with her medical background and training in biosciences, gave a scientific flavour to the book.
Thanks to all those senior friends who helped us understand the secrets of a successful retirement. Our special thanks to Mr YD Puri, Mrs Pushpa Puri, Dr PK Mukhopadhaya, Mr Ramnath Bhaskar, and Mrs Romola Neogi who allowed us to sketch their inspiring life profiles in this book.
I also thank Nikita Banga, our granddaughter who helped us complete the book much earlier than expected by constantly monitoring the progress of our work. Whenever she came to our home, like a teacher asking her students about the homework, her first question to me was How far is your book, Nanaji?
I am indebted to my friend Dr Rajneesh Gulati, MD, DM, a practicing gastroenterologist of repute who reviewed the chapter on Common Ailments in Senior Years for us.
I express special thanks to our publishers, Roli Books, and the bookstores for bringing the book in the hands of numerous readers. We hope the book will awaken the readers to their higher potential, and guide them to lead a happy and meaningful retired life.
And finally, I pay humble tribute to my late mother, Mrs Prakashwati Trehan, who was not only my mother, but also a spiritual guru, from whom I learnt the higher purpose of life. Compassionate, benevolent, and a selfless social worker, she was a role model of an ideal retiree. Without her love, inspiration and blessings; I would not have found the real meaning of retirement. With great humility I dedicate this book to her.

Introduction
E ncouraged by the response from readers to our first book The Joy of Living by Yoga, published in 2004, my wife Indu and I set ourselves the task of writing a series of similar books on personal development. We thought that would serve the best purpose in our lives after retirement. While helping others to improve the quality of their lives, we would also learn how to live a better life. The present book, Retired But Not Tired, is one among several such books we intend to write.
The retirement of one of my senior friends and one-time colleague who laid down office in 1989 as the director of a large oil company, was very tragic. A workaholic all his life, he was miserable after retirement with no work to do. He did not know how else he could keep himself busy, so he found solace in drinking, smoking and playing cards. His wife was worried and talked to me often about her husband’s over-indulgence in these unhealthy habits, which they could now ill afford. After living in palatial houses provided by the company all these years, he rented a two bedroom apartment in our housing society as he had not had the foresight to invest in a house of his own. The owner of the apartment wanted a big deposit and a hefty monthly rent, which my retired friend could not afford. Fortunately, I was able to get the deposit waived and the rent reduced.
The next hurdle was to get a cooking gas connection. The person responsible for supplying gas throughout the country through numerous LPG projects had to get his credentials verified by a humble official of our housing society for a gas connection for himself! What an ignominy! Still worse, my friend was a heart patient, asthmatic and diabetic. His health deteriorated rapidly and he died soon after.
What happened to him left a deep impression on my mind. It occurred to me that his experience may not be an isolated one. Is this the definition of retirement that countless others have to go through? Does retirement mean boredom, lack of purpose, a sense of worthlessness, ill health? Is retirement the end of one’s life?
On the other hand, I have also known many retirees who are very happy and view retirement as a golden phase of their lives, a time to reinvent oneself. If this is really so, what are the secrets of their success in retirement? Understanding these secrets became my quest and over the last fifteen years or so, I took the opportunity of studying the lives of many retired friends and acquaintances including our own. It has been a great experience. What I found was that retirement need not always be a painful experience. It is only the culmination of one’s primary career or vocation and not the dead end of one’s life. Retired you may be, but not tired of undertaking many other, sometimes even higher and more important, activities of life. It can indeed be a period of reinventing oneself. Meera, wife of one of my friends who retired as an executive director of human resources from an oil company, says, ‘In my opinion the word retirement should not be used at all. After a certain age one just wants to pursue one’s area of interest. Be it music, reading, social work or whatever. The main idea is to keep oneself occupied, to stay connected and be happy.’
I realized that retirement is indeed a wonderful phase of our lives provided we make some smart choices and follow the right strategies. This book is all about these choices and strategies for a successful retirement. I hope it will benefit readers so that they will not find themselves in the same predicament as my director friend.
As I contemplated the various choices and strategies for a successful retirement, I realized that the biggest challenge of the senior years is how to stay healthy and fit for as long as humanly possible. Ill health can be a serious blow; you cannot enjoy a happy retirement if you are crippled with the usual old-age ailments, no matter how much money and other material comforts you have accumulated in your life. And if you married fairly late in life, it is quite possible that you would be in your late sixties or seventies when you become a grandparent. Would you like to watch your grandson playing while sitting in a wheelchair or do you wish to dance joyously at his wedding? In fact, I realized that a happy retirement is nothing more than successfully managing the quality and quantity of one’s life in the senior years. I, therefore, decided to include the topic of health and well-being in greater detail in this book with simple and practical strategies that every man and woman can follow to stay healthy, happy and active till an extreme old age.
It is said that success in any game requires one to know the rules of the game. Therefore, in order to write on health and fitness, one ought to be a medical expert. But, I am neither a doctor nor a health expert qualified to advise people on issues of health and longevity. And even if I was, in the present age of specialization, no single expert can advise on all the myriad aspects of healthy aging. It requires a multi-disciplinary approach. However, with my inherent interest in medical sciences and the analytical mind of an engineer, which indeed I am, I was determined to learn the necessary skills in health sciences. Who said you can’t teach old dogs new tric